houserulz77

These aircraft have Delta1 (int'l business) cabins/service as opposed to domestic F cabins/service.

jdrtravel

1. the hard product in the main economy cabin has gotten worse.

2. JFK-SFO/LAX is about those three cities being major international hubs of commerce and thus DL is able to sell D1 seats rather than domestic first class. It really has much less to do with it being a transcon route, although the length of the flight certainly is part of the demand for D1. But if Delta could sell D1 tickets on flights from SAN I am sure they would, there is just not the market there. They also tried with SEA for a bit but this seemed to have not worked. New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco are the true world class cities of this country.

Zeeb

I wouldn't go that far. Cities like Chicago and a couple others would probably have the market for those types of flights, but being in the middle of the country the flights just aren't long enough anywhere domestically. Plus Delta doesn't have a big presence there. The JFK/LAX and JFK/SFO routes just have the combination of demand, distance, and service by Delta.

jdrtravel

Fair point about Chicago. And DL does offer LGA-ORD shuttle service with enhanced inflight services.

luv2ctheworld

While DL bellyaches about the ME3 airlines getting subsidies, they find it perfectly alright to devalue their loyalty program and alienate the very customers that they are trying to keep.

So why would a loyal DL flyer want to continue flying DL when their product is sub par compared to the international carriers? The loyalty/redemption side is so poor that it doesn't make sense. One is better just flying a foreign carrier and banking their miles there/another alliance.

sfozrhfco

Convenience, reliability, and inertia.

It takes some people a very long time to change their behavior even when it makes sense to do so.

Not everybody is focused on the FF program and just want a convenient schedule and reliable operation.

beachmouse

Outstation semi-captive reporting in! And you wouldn't believe how gosh darn hard it can be to find United saver space when the first plane out of town is going to have to be on a United Express barbie jet. Plus, United IRROPS sucketh so badly that I'm reluctant to use them even for a repositioning flight to catch something better in Houston.

Houston being the only place I can get in one hop that offers some relative airline diversity. My other one hop options from Podunk Field are Atlanta, Charlotte, DFW, or DCA, none of which will exactly offer me a wealth of other international carrier options. I can drive an hour and a half one way to Pensacola and pick up their one daily flight to Chicago or three to Miami for a little more carrier diversity but then you start to get into the realm of spending a whole day just getting to the international departure point, likely at an inconvenient time.

Oh yeah, and Southwest, which isn't bad for my husband's slightly cheaper flights to Detroit to see his family, but likes then to tell me it's impossible to do complex flight routings like Pensacola-San Francisco on their airline.

I do not love Delta and the prices they charge, but as someone in a limited airline options market (and spouse has tenure he doesn't want to give up so moving isn't in the cards right now) they generally meet our needs better than the other realistic solutions.

kop84

I wonder what percentage of people's number 1 priority in picking a primary airline is the mileage redemption?

I'm willing to be that routes, schedules, and price are the dominant decision for over 80% of demand.

So realistically airlines are fighting over the 20% that are influenced by other things. DL runs a pretty reliable operation with good front-line employees.

They have scaled back the SkyMiles Program. Other airlines have better mileage programs (for now) but aren't as good as DL at the core business of getting people from A to B safely and on time.

DL's bet is that a good portion of that 20% will be happier in the long run getting less but getting to their destination more.

i2ad10head

AA offers award seats for QATAR/ETIHAD with their own miles, for as little as 30k for Y or as much as 90K for F...and these F seats are light years ahead of the J product DELTA offers for astronomical amount of miles

Easy decision to make here

Grouchy

Looking at the Wiki and those numbers...

It's great if you're in a position when you can announce price hikes of 300-200% (Y/B/M SKyMiles upgrades) almost one year in advance.
Though, it's a pretty good argument for some more competition...

Esltroy

I was willing to see how it goes this year. I love flying delta. I am not a hub captive. Is this the change that will finally make me jump ship? AA is looking better every day. When one looks at the website for status matches, looks like AA is winning. I know that southwest did a similar change to their program...but does a regular business traveler really wan to be a southewesr customer? I am still figuring if delta makes sense anymore as a diamond. I get first seats about half of the time since I am a Monday to Thursday flyer...as the top of the food chain flyer. Most do the time delta is slightly higher in proce than the competition. But usually only 50-100 more expensive than the competitors. (Which I can justify by bag fee waivers).

Time to really ask myself. Stay with delta and get reamed when I want to use my miles? Or switch? Delta is helping me make the choice.

I really will miss the folks at the local airport I use a lot. They are rock stars.

Side note: I still have 18 trips booked this year. Nothing booked for 2016. I am kicking myself for not seeing this coming. I could have done a status match in 2015. I'll see what AA does in the mean time.

dzflyer

American has sent me several match offers at no fee im gonna wait to jump ship until i see if AA program stays the same upon completion of the merger if it does im off like a velcro prom dress to american

sdsearch

All 3 (remaining) major legacy airlines that fly NYC*-LAX offer special premium service on that routes, in large part because of demand from entertainment industry people (both NYC and LA are major entertainment industry hubs)*. It's less clear to me why NYC-SFO gets the exact same treatment from all of them (Pixar?).

* They used to all do this JFK-LAX and JFK-SFO, but UA just announced it's shifting theirs to EWR-LAX and EWR-SFO. because UA has hardly any other flights at JFK. DL and AA both have lots of connections at JFK, so I'm sure they'll both keep those as JFK flights.

355F1

How does one get targeted with these emails? I fly over 150k MQMs every year with Delta on pure MRs and seeing the world on dirt cheap airfares.

I had 13k miles in my US Air account from flying PHX-PDX-PHX as Delta's options suck for the return home if its a Sunday.

So, I decided to get the AA Citi card two months ago and spent $3k immediately to earn 50k miles! SO now I have at least a one-way award ticket in International J! ^^ (And just for ish and giggles I looked at availability from PHX-AMS and there were any low 62.5k award tickets available in probably 95% of the days I looked!!!)

I will have 278,000 MQMs with DL by Dec 31 and approximately 790,000 Skymiles. I also have the DL AMEX Reserve Card and spend $60k/year on it to get the 30k MQMs/RDMs!

But I am thinking it might make sense to switch to AA because I think I can accumulate a ton of miles with a status match and a bunch of MRs with their bonus miles earned like DL used to do for their elites.(Obviously this is assuming they don't pull a DL and changed to spend-based RDMs)

I don't travel for business. I just travel all around the world for fun because it is so cheap if you know how to find the deals, and I get a crapload of time off of work. I just did 3 days in Tokyo over the 4th of July for $620RT on DL and used some soon-to-expire GUCs to make that trip more comfy.

So....my only issue is that living in PHX gives me TONS of cheap DL MR-fares.....if I switch to AA then is it even possible to get MR-type fares from their hub????

naranjero

I guess it's Silicon Valley and all that stuff. Lots of businesses here, headquarters, etc.

Lucky you! That's enough for TWO (not one, but two!) J RT tickets to Australia on DL metal! But that's probably will be more like one ticket in 2016. One way. In Y.
Burn your miles while you can, with your MQMs there's absolutely no need to fly cash tickets.

Check some routes you fly. Just try to switch to AA for the rest of the year, why not? You're already DM with Delta, you can always jump back.