woodford02A

I would disagree. DTW has the Big 3 automakers plus their many suppliers, many with global operations which they need to commute to.

And it's not just about DTW, it's about all the corporate centers that have connections to/from DTW to fill those seats to Asia. Think Louisville and Lexington, where Toyota has operations.

jdrtravel

Forget DTW. Its about DL's large international operations at JFK especially, and secondly at LAX and ATL, all of which have plenty of o/d demand for J. Remember that DL has basically decided to own JFK. American of course has a large operation there but UA gave up.

hockeyinsider

I don't think there are many buying business-class when it's over $7,000. C-suites, sure. High-priced lawyers or general counsel, sure. Maybe top salesmen, but that's about it. I priced a trip out of Detroit to Tokyo for this fall. It was $11,000 on the dates I wanted. Toronto, with a connection in Detroit and Portland to Tokyo, was under $5,000.

lucycan

Yes, a huge devaluation. I will avoid these as long as I can.

SJC ORD LDR

From what I read (and I could be wrong), but the ratio of J/Y or F+J/Y on DL is smaller than on UA and AA. It either means that UA and AA plan to sell more or give more out as upgrades. Since, only top level elites can get upgrade certificates and they aren't easy to use, I would think that UA and AA tend to sell more J seats than DL. But, I don't have the numbers and I'm not sure.

Anyway, back on topic. I have found it very difficult to use a GUC in the first place, so having an even smaller J cabin would make it worse. I would not buy a ticket unless I know that the GUC will go through.

dinanm3atl

Yup. I'm with the other guy. Going to email a complaint and outline have no possible upgrade, use 4 GUCs to get to Business AND ATL-SFO can get upgraded but have nothing on a 4hr intra-asia(or europe) flight.

You can just fly a few times domestic and fly 3-5 times to Singapore and not even spend 8K and just have a DL AMEX. Maintaining the status isn't too difficult.

However I have to think MOST PMs/DMs are truly earning it and thus it is in fact a devaluation.

hockeyinsider

I'm pretty sure Delta flies the A330 between DTW and NGO in Japan.

I don't think we'll see premium-economy to Europe, although I suspect the A350, at least once Delta has a good number of them, could fly to Europe just as the 747 occasionally replaced a 767 because of high demand on certain routes.

I'm not convinced that Delta will stick with the A350. I think Trump will put immense pressure on Delta to buy American; that is, Boeing 787 or 777.

KDCAflyer

That point is pretty baseless. Unless Trump can force Boeing to open another factory, the backlogs on the 787s will continue to be insane. The 777 is a solid aircraft, but not what DL is looking for to fill this particular niche.

C W

The A330neo will primarily replace the 767 on European routes. The capacity is higher than the 767, but for medium-haul, like East-Coast TATL, it can match the 787 in CASM.

The efficiency of the 787 and A350 are best exploited on longer routes which is where I think we'll see the A350 kept. It makes more sense to fly the less efficient 772 on shorter high capacity routes. Once they are retrofitted they will have almost exactly the same number of seats as the A359, so efficiency, aircraft availability, and base location should be the main factors in determining which route gets which.

Often1

Perhaps DL will be different, but other carriers have found that when a true PE product is offered, there are a lot of businesses quite willing to pay for BE, but not J (D1).

C+ means fewer seats because of the extra pitch and a service standard which is somewhere between Y and PE. Not sure how much of a market there is for that and it certainly makes no sense to make it a free UG.

The only difference between this 3-class config. and the 4-class on LH/BA is the addition of F, not yet another form of premium Y which really isn't that premium.

hockeyinsider

The whole point of free seats in Delta's extra-legroom economy-class (aka comfort-plus and before that economy-comfort) for elites was to get us hooked on them so that we would never buy cheap economy-class (aka steerage) again.

jdrtravel

This is ridiculous. With only 2 major twin aisle jet manufacturers in the world this is just not going to happen (if you don't count the Russian company.... Ilyushin...hmmm....)

hockeyinsider

For what it's worth, Delta is claiming that its new premium-economy seats are "up to" 19 inches wide, as opposed the 18 1/2-inch width that many bloggers have reported.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-relea...300475406.html

hockeyinsider

Consider this:

Between October 30, when the A350 launches and the end of 2017, the cheapest business-class ticket from MDW, ORD or DTW to NRT that I could find using the calendar mode on Google Flights was $5,487.

The cheapest premium-economy ticket, again for the same cities and same dates using the same method searching, was $2,087.

The cheapest economy-class ticket, again for the same cities and same dates using the same method searching, was $1,157.

If you can't afford business-class and don't think you'll like premium-economy, you could buy an entire row of three seats on the A350 (the layout is 3x3x3 in economy-class) for $3,471. That may sound crazy, but you would have poor man's business-class. While you wouldn't receive the added amenities of premium-economy -- some might call those amenities lipstick on a pig -- you would probably sleep much, much better, especially if you brought aboard a good pillow and blanket.

mother-

What did they do with all the extra width from removing the seat? Isn't that basically the width of the Y seats in a 350?