I think you will find that there are not very many people who do MRs. Those seats will be filled with people who are looking for low-cost fares for vacations.

I took three trips to PRG last year on Czech Air and did not get a single MQM or SkyMile for them. I preferred the lower price to the mileage.

You clearly don't understand marketing or marketing folks (those two words together alone show your lack of understanding of the subject).

Sales people think that every sales is a good sale. Marketing people don't share that believe which is why there is such a thing as "customer segmentation study" or very basic "target consumer definition".

Not sure what you do for a living but it certainly can't be sales or marketing.

Now, DL has defined their target audience as anybody who spends $2,500+ per year on DL tickets. Whether or not that was a smart move, time will tell

Is that true? It would seem that they have defined their minimal elite audience as $2.5K and 25K MQMs / year. Their targets are anyone who is looking to fly from A to B for their asking price, as most of the seats are occupied by non-elites on most (but certainly not all) routes.

It would be interesting if some of their Skyteam partner friends decided that this unilateral reduction in their revenue implied a substantial change to or breach of their agreement and went off to Star Alliance or OneWorld :)

Honestly, they don't need to. Available Seat Mile growth has been marginal for years. At the same time air travel is on the rise. Discouraged customers will be replaced by new customers. Add to that three captive hubs and you can see DL's strategy is to keep growth marginal in the near term while wringing more money out of those that stay.

They'll have a balancing act in expanding markets like NYC, but outside that I would expect DL to do well with this. There's enough disruptive forces at customer nexus points like Flyer Talk that would certainly short circuit something like a "Save Sky Miles" campaign.

If so, then DL is golden. That's often said very authoritatively, however if the negative drum beat is loud enough (there's already a lot of negative press and social media out there about this) it will drive new customers away.

You say "...three captive hubs...", but DL's pricing makes that untrue. The "advantage" of being in a captive hub is NS flights, but when I can fly to SMF for 1/2 the cost of an NS to SFO, and have to LO in MSP or SLC, or even ATL, what difference does it make if I LO in DFW (AA), or DEN (UA), or PHX (US)?

Just checked my activity for 2012. 4 long trips (no MRs), 52,137 miles - but short of $5,000 "MQDs" (presumably all the money I spent in fares last year were 1-to-1 MQDs) by over $450.

So by taking advantage of that great 4th of July LAX-LHR $1,776 J fare and giving DL business (that I otherwise wouldn't have) I would've shot myself in the foot MQDs-wise if this had been 2013 instead of 2012.

Guess I should learn never to take them up on their fare offers again, then. :rolleyes:

As the MR people scoop up the low fares, they leave behind more expensive fares which casual travelers might not pay and decide to fly another airline. Since the MR crowd usually are higher tier elites, they cost DL more in the benefits provided to them.

With capacities at all time highs, I don't think DL needs to worry about losing people who are filling low cost seats (i.e. mileage runners) and flying to just to earn the miles. Lose the mileage runner, and the low cost seat remains which will probably be snagged by a casual traveler searching Kayak or Expedia who doesn't have a FF # or spends 60k for a domestic award in Y.

What difference does it make if they drive away the FF or the vacation traveler? In fact the FF is better, because you now have them captive to your program, which is the whole point of loyalty programs in the first point- -to get your customers captive. If you suddenly don't reward your loyalty customers, they are ALL going to go buy the cheaper fare on the other airline, and force you to market your lowest fare instead of having your FF flyers automatically book on your airline. The Loyalty program replaces the need to market cheap fares.

Conspiracy theory time: do you think this is an attempt to build a large amount of resistance to AA and US merging? If people get upset enough about this, they will push the government not to approve the AA/US merger. You can't undo what has already been done so DL is safe, but now got rid of a potential big competitor.

Everyone,

This is just a re-post of my survey to address the new DL changes. I'm not trying to spam you, I just want to make sure everyone has an opportunity to take it who wants to and not everyone might be looking through the old posts. We currently have 40 responses which is great. Results coming soon.

The survey is here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Y63TYGB

Lurkers, please don't be shy!

Thanks,
Coinboy66

There's a missing choice from #3 (too late, I know), but revenue could be unaffected for one or more reasons (elites not making up as big a % as they think, replacement of defectors by others etc.)

You're right. People can leave #3 blank if they don't think this will impact DL's revenue and I can track how many people leave it blank (one person already did this).

FFers are more expensive. Bonus miles alone likely represent a reduction in revenue of around 2 or 3% for a GM or above.

Nonsense. DL already has to compete on price. If they didn't, and if these "loyal" "elites" actually were captive, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

Welcome to FlyerTalk, tanglin. ^

If you are really only slightly below the 12.5K spend, this may not be an issue. However, if you are feeling like DL is throwing you under the bus, there are alternative airlines. Consider looking through these threads...

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...-1-1-13-a.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...ng-dm-exp.html