DL2SXM

If Delta was losing money on this, they would reverse course. Sure, there might be some skymiles members who left for another airline but they are probably the low end DM/PM that Delta could care less about. Think of it this way, its actually a win win for Delta. Instead of all those EC seats being given away for free to DMs and PM's, now, some of them are being bought by GM's, Silvers and non elites. Thats thinking outside the box... added revenue on both ends for Delta.

NWA_Junkie

Thanks for the reply. I have a feeling it is a mistake in Delta's system, and I am guessing that they are going to have a lot of upset folks that thought they paid (or didn't) for an economy comfort seat, and ended up in regular economy seat. Not good news.

PS: If you would like to see what I am talking about, look at the seat map for this Saturdays (May 3rd) JFK to LAX DL472 (8:15am dep). [alternatively any other future flight on a 76Z v1, i've checked many (10+ flights)]. You will see that 16/17 CDE are available for economy comfort selection. Directly contradicts what those seats really are (or at least "were") and the delta map at:
https://www.delta.com/content/www/en...300-76zv1.html

Carl Johnson

Yeah, that's pretty awesome for Delta to get GMs to buy seats that are free for them. It's like magic.

DL2SXM

golds get EC for free? Then let me reword that to say, Delta will make money on both ends by getting people to buy business class seats, K+ fares AND silvers + general members to buy into EC. In this scenario, Delta wins by pushing the low spend DM/PM and to a lesser extent, GM out the door.

MumbaiFlyer

FWIW, I was wait listed for a mileage upgrade on a Sunday afternoon flight JFK-SFO on a K fare. When I checked in I asked the agent if the upgrade request was coded correctly since @DeltaAssist seemed to get it to where it said "Systemwide Upgrade Requested" (I have no SWUs). She said they do everything at the gate; when I approached the gate agent to inquire, he laughed off the idea that I was hoping for an upgrade through a K fare and that was that.

That said, it was a completely full flight on a new plane, not to mention a sunday afternoon, so it more than likely may have been a combination of factors, and not necessarily specifically that I was on a K fare. Perhaps the agent was implying that there was just no way I'd be eligible given the number of people he knew would be ahead of me on the list.

sethb

Who knows? That isn't the major loss, though; medallions switching to AA is what costs.

Eventually. It has now been two months; how long did it take them to reverse course on anything else?

The other way around, actually: the DMs who don't get upgraded stay in their EC seats for no revenue. Upgrading a DM frees up an EC seat that might get sold for actual revenue.

Unless the DM is now flying AA, leaving the seat available. But I don't think that's a win for DL so much as one for Citi (vs. Amex).

FitTraveler

Yep. All of his non-rev buddies.

Delta BusinessEmployee class.

DL2SXM

agreed that its been only two months, not nearly long enough. So, in your opinion, how much time will go by before Delta 'reverses course' on this?

bubbashow

...and trains the DM that he/she can expect a $1400 seat for $249, thus assuring that this "elite"-level flyer will never spend what is required to sit up front.

btw...I thought the argument on here was that all the DM were leaving anyway? If that is the case, we don't need to worry about that argument.

Carl Johnson

But this:

is just speculation. Militating against that scenario are the fact that the business class seats are severely overpriced for the quality, that many FFs fly for work and their employers won't spring for K+ when they weren't before, and that EC seats often go unoccupied now. Leisure flyers often book further in advance than FFs and can buy EC seats at booking. They don't decline to buy EC seats because those seats are unavailable; they decline to buy them because they don't want to pay the extra. There were a couple of empty EC seats on my flight on Friday, including one next to me. Any of the passengers sitting further back could have bought it, but they didn't.

Carl Johnson

No. Why not present counterarguments to the points people are actually making, rather than presenting a distortion of their views. I'm not leaving, because for my route Delta is cheap. I don't mind the Ryanair experience toward which they are moving, because for me they are charging Ryanair prices. Other people who are paying a lot more are going to analyze the situation differently.

DL2SXM

All NS LAX to JFK flights, when checked the day before, seem to be sold out in J.

Playsmart

^^^^^

bubbashow

.... and those paying enough will have their desired cabin and seat.

clr4t8koff

I'd love to know where you're finding these $249 fares. I just did a Matrix search for 0-4 nights for May, June, July, Aug, Sept and Oct. for DL and the cheapest flight I could find was $520 on July 4th.