Cloudship

I think this symbolizes the difference of opinion here. There is a difference between a rewards program and a marketing program. For some people they see Skymiles as a rewards program - give back to me because I give to you. Then there are others who see this as a marketing program - how to get people who otherwise would not fly with you, who otherwise may not even choose to fly at all, and get them to purchase a ticket on Delta. And perhaps that has changed internally at Delta itself. They were in a position where they needed to fill seats, they needed to get people flying. Now they may feel that travel is up, that they have a surplus of customers and can afford to bleed the lower profit ones.

That is the difference here. I, for one, think they don't have enough higher paying customers yet. I don't think they are have too many flights where they are that oversold that they can a pool of waiting customers to purchase those lost tickets, and the passengers who do replace them are going to be bringing in even less profit. I suppose the difference is whether or not it is truly costing them more to carry that skymiles customer over the regular customer, and whether that skymiles customer's upgrade chance seat can be replaced by a paying fare or just another uncompensated upgrade.

Medeski

Best observation of this whole 100+ page thread.

StayingHomeIsBetter

Really?

Never2late

This is going to be very unpopular. I am already reconsidering to move to Mileageplus! I need make sure that mileage plus is a good program as well.

AA_EXP09

They don't have high paying customers as their service is not in general worth a premium.
If DL had service like OZ/NH/CX/JL/LH/SQ then maybe they could get paid premium pax.
The most I would pay for J on a US airline is 80% more than the cheapest Q/K/T/R fare.
On airlines above except LH I would put that number at 120%-130% and 3x for first.

AA_EXP09

Great for redemptions but terrible for UGs if that's your goal.

javabytes

The worse DL gets for upgrades, the less this matters.

StayingHomeIsBetter

Not disputing that whatsoever.

I just find it amusing that we have some folks who think, that after a few months in the black, DL management are the Almighty's gift to Wall Street.

One thing I learned in high school math... when you plot a straight line through too few data points too close together, your chances of getting the slope correct are awfully poor.

monitor

Rumor around is that UA will announce PQDs (Premier Qualifying Dollars) on Thursday.

TTT

For some reason I thought they already announced a spend requirement. Maybe it was an accidental announcement but I swear there was a thread about it last year sometime.

javabytes

It was floated and then shot down.

Medeski

Not seeing the thread over in the UA forum. Mind posting a link?

monitor

Just a rumor being bruited around in Teh Penalty Box on MilePoint. That board harbors many very seasoned UA flyers and rumors found there often have substance.

DaChief

I don't see making any knee jerk reactions right now. Since the major impact of this isn't until 2014, I will make a decision at the end of this year based on my travel projections for 2014.

pbarnette

And I find it amusing that you simply refuse to acknowledge that DL has outperformed the industry for the better part of the last 4 to 5 years. The airline industry is certainly a difficult one, but DL's management has simply performed better than the competition. It isn't just profits, but a merger that is, any way you want to slice it, one of the most successful airline mergers ever. It is solid operational execution. It is smart strategic moves like the LGA swap. Heck, they even come up smelling like roses on their decision to delay delivery of the 787.

Were I the only one saying this, that would be one thing, but DL management is widely respected. That isn't opinion, but fact. Frankly, I suspect you know that, but simply can't bring yourself to admit it.

DL management may be as incompetent as you would have us believe, but if they are, they may very well have the world's largest lucky horseshoe.

One thing I learned in high school was that blind conjecture and reliance upon outdated data is likely to be worse than using even limited data.