hokiekev

I am a DL DM and I have noticed in the last month that Delta is not competitive on almost any flight out of SLC against *A or WN or anyone else for anytime this summer. Fares are differing by hundreds mostly and in extreme cases over double. Is *A making a run on SLC or is Delta trying to gouge us for being hub captive.

On my government contracts I can't justify paying more than askght difference for flights and I can't justify Delta for my travel this summer if this keeps up. Any thoughts?

jsmith50

I vote for hub captive. The other airlines have to discount to remain competitive in and out of those markets. Unfortunately, because DL has the significant portion of market share out of SLC and they control the vast majority of the direct routes, they can charge whatever they wish. Clearly people are paying what they're charging or their planes would leave empty, which they're not.

hokiekev

I agree... But for 4 years I have been able to justify my travel because they were always better prices or equal to the competition. Now they are not.

jsmith50

Agreed this is problematic. We allow our guys a lot of flexibility to fly the airlines they want to fly. Granted, being based out of ATL, more times than not it's DL. However, if they started turning in requests for bookings that were twice the competitor's price, it wouldn't make sense for us to allow those requests. We generally will allow them some leeway that if it's within a couple hundred bucks and they can justify it, i.e. direct flight versus a 3 hour layover, we'll rubber stamp flying DL in those situations. Perfect example, to go from ATL-SLC, on DL it's direct. On AA, it goes to DFW and then, on average, 2 hours later on to SLC. My time and their time is worth more than that. I totally hear where you're coming from though!

phatpaw

I status matched a number of months back with United, and now I have two trips in the next 4 weeks on them. Prices have been significantly higher on Delta on a number of itineraries I've been pricing out. I think I'm going to be doing a lot of split trips between the two carriers for the foreseeable future.

hokiekev

I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing this. I'm not sure what brought on the change.

cmh flyer

And in and out of MSP, another DL hub, it's also crazy expensive. For a recent trip, CMH-MSP roundtrip, it was $860 on DL.

hokiekev

Is it a new phenomenon or has this been constant?

RFDMinnesota

+1 on the MSP comments.

I would however like to point out a very unscientific observation of mine. Both flying and DL.com seat maps for flights out of MSP-LAX, MSP-ATL, MSP-MKE, MSP-FLL, MSP-SFO seem to have substantially decreased their loads. It seems to be about one 80-90% full flight per day and the rest are wide open.

Perhaps their pricing has caught up with them. I can't imagine they are turning a profit on most of these recently.

yohanson

Try booking MSP-CVG. Those flights have been through the roof for years now.

phatpaw

The thing about that however, is that those flights won't just be filled by MSP origination passengers. They will be filled by even more passengers that originated before MSP. It all comes down to whether DL feels they can make more money from a connecting passenger on a full route or an originating passenger at any hub on a direct flight.

Unfortunately us hub people get the short end of the stick $$$ wise because of those contributing economic factors.

johnslloyd

I'm absolutely seeing this out of SLC, too. One of my frequent routes is SLC-ABQ and DL fares since first of March have jumped from being on par with WN, and are now up to 3x and even higher on the prime time-of-day flights. Absolutely insane. Schedule on this route has also been changed so that first flight of the day is later and much less desirable.

For any DL employee-lurkers out there, you are doing a great job of driving me back to WN, from where I came last fall. For this month and next I have booked 8 legs on WN when I would have preferred to give them to you.

dollerman73

Let us know how your status match is going, I am in the exact same boat. The prices out of SLC on DL have gone through the roof, and I am finally considering making the switch to UA as well. I have actually taken a few east coast trips this year on US, and wont be funneling much business that way.

If more loyal DL elites out SLC jump ship maybe we see some impact? Wishful thinking I know!!

hokiekev

I hate the notion of becoming a best price flier as I really would like to be loyal but it can't be justified. A flight that I'm taking today on US (ugh) was and still is $569 on US and $1250 (for an H fare.... H.. not M, B, or Y). Same one stop and comparable times (US is actually slightly better times). I could see charging a hefty premium for direct flights where the service is much improved over competition, but this doesn't make sense at all. Maybe Bubbashow can justify it.

flyerwma

I have noticed this as well out of SLC.

Am planning my annual trip JFK-SLC for Presidents Week next Feb. I started watching exactly at midnight 331 days out. Since the fares have been loaded, there has been nothing below a Q fare on any of the direct flights, with most at M/B/Y (and smattering of H). I know seat maps are not the best indication, but on one flight, I saw it go from H to B between 12:01am and 7am on Day T-331, with no seats assigned on the seatmap. (One would think anyone obsessive enough to book at exactly T-331 would be obsessive enough to assign a seat).

I do have EF fare alerts out on these flights.

I am curious what happens, if anything, when B6 releases its February schedule and provides competition on this nonstop.