jamesteroh

Gig103

I so want to see that button appear on Google Flights and other OTAs. Expedia gets all the way to the end and then offers the upgrade to regular economy (unless you book one of their room+flight deals, which I won't any more because of BE).

xliioper

ITA Matrix can limit the displayed fares to certain fare classes with advanced controls. While there doesn't seem to be a way to provide a negative, if you are booking something well in advance and know there will likely be X/V fares you can use 'f bc=x|bc=v' to exclude E fares and only show X and V fares. You can then use ITA Matrix Powertools or Book with Matrix to book.

Zorak

You can do negation using a tilde ~ character. To exclude BE on Delta:

You can chain negations together too:

ITA Software Matrix Airfare Search Consolidated Information and Help Thread

It gets trickier if you want to do a multi-airline search because the BE fare class is different (e.g. it's E on DL but N on UA). I forget if there's a sane way to combine them like the pseudo "~bc=e on DL but ~bc=N on UA"

xliioper

Cool, thanks. I was trying bc=~e which is where I messed up.

bost

Some fare aggregators like momondo and kayak have this option as well.

Orange County Commuter

Orange County Commuter

QuiGonJohn

So our flights from FLL to BIS are getting closer. About a month ago, Delta changed the flights and instead of one stop/connection in MSP, they added a stop & connection in ATL, then MSP, then BIS. I wrote to the CEO and was able to get them to compensate for the change in flights by pre-selecting our seats. A woman in the Exec Office did this, but window and center on all the large planes and 2 seats together (on one side of the aisle for the smaller BIS planes). So now my wife & I will be seated together.

btonkid12345

This is exactly why "writing to the CEO" no longer reaches the real person, or in many cases someone with real full authority - but rather just an escalated customer service supervisor.

By the way, writing to the CEO of any airline - let alone one as service-oriented as DL - over a schedule change is something I would never do. I've flown DL a lot and had many problems, and have never once yet had something significant enough to write to the CEO.

You bought basic economy and wanted free seat assignments? I bet you could have called and had a reservations supervisor do this over the phone after the schedule change. What a waste.

And I don't have the words to express the frustration with DL over bending the rules like this - they should have offered any other flight schedule or even a full refund - but full, assigned, free seats on a BE fare just make no sense. Especially when someone "writes to the CEO" over something as trivial as a schedule change!

QuiGonJohn

What a cheery sap you are. Guess you really enjoy pissing on anyone's parade. BTW, reservation specialist could not find me another acceptable 1 connection flight and could not do the seat assignment. And I have found writing to CEO's of companies, especially a polite letter which began with praising Delta for our flights to/from Ireland earlier in the year, have usually returned good results. And why should I not be compensated something (like the seat assignment), when I bought a flight with 1 stop/1 connection and now it has been changed to 2 stops/2 connections. A change in the terms of carriage. In fact, one option would have been a full refund. But we didn't want to cancel our trip, so this was a minor consolation on their part.

btonkid12345

Thanks for the sarcasm! I'm not pissing on your parade; just realizing that when you, on a highly restricted fare, get free seats, that means seats not available for those of us who book last minute and just want any aisle seat.

I think writing to the CEO should be reserved for highly exceptional issues that you've tried to take up via the normal "help" channels they offer, without satisfaction. Otherwise everyone would be writing to the CEO for any trivial matter; this is why Delta has reservations and customer service departments, with supervisory hierarchy to handle the vast majority of issues that occur.

Delta should have offered you a full refund. Could any other airlines get you there in 1 stop? If so, why dont you fly them?

You mentioning being compensated for a change in stops is funny because their CoC you agreed to at purchase doesn't even guarantee travel from point A to B via air exclusively, they could bus you there if they wanted (or you could take a refund).

Your post history suggests you were looking for any reason to not pay Delta for seat assignments despite being told at purchase that one of the primary differentiators of the fare you purchased was to not be assigned a seat until check in.

btonkid12345

Delete mistaken second reply please

vincentharris

That may be true, but I have evidence of being asked pretty often to switch seats because "X cant live without Y for 30 minutes, 90 minutes, 120 minutes, etc."

Unless you are offering me a seat in F I am going to say no because either A) I am sitting next to a person I made sure to book to sit next to B) why would I give up a C+ or exit row aisle for a regular Y seat C) both

I watched recently a guy in his early 20s be nice and do a whole switch a roo with 9 different people because the original passenger never had the seat she offered him. He moved 9 different times and gave up an exit row window for a middle regular Y seat.

vincentharris