ethernal

You have a rather myopic view of supply and demand. @ruckzac is completely right to say that these are not demand-based fares.

The reality is that on a demand basis Delta is willing to fill many of these seats on the same flights for as low as $100-150. Fare sales are quite frequent (especially in competitor hubs) and Delta will fill these seats by increasing quantity demanded by lowering price for some markets. The fact that these one-ways are universally 105K means that they are indeed not demand based - they are meant to be punitive such that no one books them. Delta is basically telling its customers "don't use SkyMiles for this type of fare."

You can agree or disagree with Delta's approach (Delta has the right to effectively prohibit one way redemption in their program if they wish - similar to what they used to do to domestic award tickets) - but you cannot say that the fares are demand-based.

rucksack

Looking at UA and AA for my travel dates, there is plenty of low-level award availability (30k), which tells me there isn't a lot of demand for these particular dates/destinations. In fact, I ended up booking an award through Flying Blue because their business class award was 60% of the price for Delta's economy award.

I think we're talking across each other here. I'm not arguing about the principles of free market economics. I'm just making the observation that Delta's supposed motivation for getting rid of its award chart was to more closely tie award pricing to fluctuations in demand for flights; arbitrarily setting a flat award rate for all one-way TATL flights within 90 days regardless of load factors is counter to this.

Gig103

I hear you on that and you're probably right. Many PM/DM around here talk about the free redeposit as a major perk. And I say that only having been reading the Delta forum for a few months!

Some members also keep the Amex card specifically for PWM, that's another subset that like them as a 'currency'. of course, the PWM tickets earn medallion status which is awesome and has me considering one of the cards.

MarkP24

Sad that the PWM is considered a perk....

CPMaverick

Nobody is talking about Delta in general, this post is specifically about award redemption. Skymiles is a DL program, and DL has a monopoly on the currency of Skymiles. Supply and demand does not work in this scenario. If you say it does, you don't understand supply and demand.

Transactions are made where supply and demand curves meet. In the case of Skymiles, which is a monopoly, DL chooses the supply without having to consider demand. There is no supply curve, therefore you can't say supply and demand dictate the outcome. DL may consider demand, but they don't have to.

Yes, a person can choose to change programs, but they can't bring their Skymiles with them.

ncwillett

Is it 100% demand based? No. But the laws of supply and demand still play a role here. It's just a little more complicated because it's not just about award tickets alone. Pax can choose to pay with miles or dollars, so Delta tries to balance demand for flights in general with demand for award tickets specifically. While one person may think 105k miles is a ridiculous rate, set arbitrarily high as punishment for booking OW, someone else who maybe doesn't have cash flow at the moment to pay in dollars might jump at the chance to book a "free" one way ticket for 105k.

CPMaverick

Sorry, this just isn't a supply and demand scenario based on the economics of it. State your opinion another way but don't use terms that don't fit.

Yes Delta might consider demand but market forces are not setting the price.