Every time someone says this, another says it should be spend based, not how many miles you fly. And many would be gone if not for rollover.

Bottom line, there is no pleasing all the people all the time. Maybe DL will kill r/o one day but that doesn't seem to be soon. For some here, it is like crack that they just have to keep coming back for more.

There are many "secret" contracts that have specially negotiated Y fares between markets. People are just assuming that things are very linear.

I've seen US-Asia BusinessElite (and equivalent on United) discounted as much as 40%++.

I've seen Y fares from Europe to the States, that are close in price to V fares.

There is a LOT we don't see, since these contracts (on purpose) are not disclosed. But, believe me, if you company has the volume, you are getting pretty amazing discounts. It's just no publicized by Delta.

The only people who have issues, are small business owners that need to travel internationally. They are "basically" screwed.

My company also uses corporate travel program. I sometimes check the class booked through my corporate travel vs. same price on Delta that gives you a better class on their site for the same cost. Irritating

Bruce..I'm glad that's your former employer. I do professional placements as part of my business, and for any job involving heavy travel, I always force a copy of travel policies out of the client before any interview. About 10% of the time HR refuses to do this, at which point I scratch them and send a memo up the C level about it.

If a company thinks your travel time is worth only 100 bucks over lowest fare in today's world, you don't want to work there .

$40 more than cheapest for us to trigger an alert.

Narrow view. My company loved them. They will pay for business, but would wince at those $8-10k fares, or the justification level for the trip was much higher. At a $3500-4000 trip, especially a flexible/changeable one, things are much happier. What you declare "irresponsible" with a company's money was actually the exact opposite. And I knew others, especially contractors, who felt the same way when they only had to bill out half the cost of a business class ticket to their customer.

What started to change things for me was when DL started really tightening the inventory on the SWUs. That made me much less comfortable playing the game than in years past when there were certain routes I just never had to sweat it on (ie basically to Europe anytime in winter).

All that said, I personally and selfishly probably prefer the new program. All they need is to allow transferability and the ability to use regionals on JFK transcons and I will remove this issue from my Skymiles demerit list. :-)

To be fair, justifying a higher-priced ticket wasn't too difficult. One justification that always worked was a desire to take a non-stop flight rather than two (or more!) flights with a connection. Another reason was schedule: If the cheapest flight was at night, but your meeting was in the morning, then you couldn't take the cheap flight (without staying overnight, at even greater expense). So, I never had a problem, but some people did.

I was just trying to make the point that employers, in general, aren't idiots and will protect themselves against employees buying unnecessarily expensive plane tickets. That's what responsible employers should do!

Bruce

My husband and I are based in Asia and currently make 3-4 trips back to the US purchasing B fares and using SWU's to upgrade. We have noticed in the past year that it is increasingly more difficut to secure those upgrades in advance. We will drop down to PM in 2014 . If as PM we can't choose global upgrade vouchers and can't clear on the day of the flight using miles, there is no benefit for us to purchase a B fare. If I'm going to be sitting back in the cattle car, I won't be making 3-4 trips back, either. We'll drop down to 1-2 trips/year instead.

My company uses Concur and it seems that a flight goes from "green" to "yellow" when the price of the ticket is about $100 more than the cheapest flight. But, we are allowed to spend up to $200 more if it's a direct flight. We are also allowed to book in J if it's international and the flight is over 8 hours. I don't fly internationally for work though.

We had a similar rule, but the threshold for business class was 7 hours, not 8.

Bruce

In any game there will be winners and losers. Just life.

I've been saying this will only get worse. If we all think that just because DL removed fare restrictions they will all of a sudden open the flood gates to OU availability we are joking ourselves.

Thanks for sharing, good reminder to write in.

I got mine within 24 hours.

This is exactly what will happen.

In February 2014, if you are a Diamond frequent Delta flier from West Coast cities into JFK - prepare to get comfy in coach. Delta has selected flights to/fro LAX, SFO and Seattle into JFK and eliminated Diamond unlimited upgrades replacing them with only 4 (yes 4!) Global upgrade certificates.

Now we all know they don't sell out the business class on these flights so why do this to their most loyal fliers...and why only West Coast? I hear it's because (1) they are testing to see if the Diamonds will now actually purchase the business class seats once they are taken away from them and (2) it's a "test case" for many, many other Delta routes. In other words, if they start selling business class seats on the West Coast routes, then look out Atlanta and others...they are going to roll it out wider.

As for myself, I will indeed start buying business class seats...but on any other airline - not Delta. Not going to reward them with more of my $$ on a stunt like this.

can you get the upgrade if you are PM or less?

My understanding is Platinums get 4 (or less) Global certificates as well for these routes. Under PM probably close to no certificates. You can find the exact data from their website.