That's been happening for a while -- especially on international flights.

Seems like the net is they've brought in revenue fare rules to award tickets where historically award tickets essentially had fare rules that were in line with the more flexible fare classes

That's half the point of Basic Economy - force Medallions to pay for their existing benefits. So no, they have intentionally made it "not worth it". But at the expense of you now having to pay $50 to get a C+ seat whereas before they were charging you $0.

You mean regular economies are now 2500 SkyPesos pricier than where it should be.

For me, a typical reward trip would be a short one hour flight to NYC for some shopping. So, I could live with Basic on the outbound for an hour, but, on the way back, I may need 2 or 3 checked bags for purchases I made. I don't believe it's possible to do Basic in one direction and Main Cabin in the other direction without redeeming for 2 separate one-way tickets - - so I would lose the discount when the round-trip mileage requirement is cheaper than redeeming for 2 one-ways.

For what it's worth, basic economy does not take away checked bags benefits as far as I know.

Can't you go shopping in Pittsburgh or at PIT airport? Alternatively, Berlin or Mexico City should have some good shopping.

That's exactly what happened with cash BE fares. "Oh, it'll just be on flights where we compete with Spirit/Frontier/etc. so we can match their headline fares". Now it's everywhere. :td:

Hmmmmm. I just checked, and you're absolutely RIGHT! I never bought a BE ticket before, so, guess I had it in my head that it was similar to RyanAir and EasyJet where EVERYTHING costs extra! :)

So, I guess the main difference for DMs & PMs would be whether or not the BE Award Tix are redepositable or not. I can't imaging ANY PM or DM couldn't live for a one hour flight without an UG.

Come on, M.E. You're a pretty worldly gal . . . . Would you really expect the same stores and brands of merchandise in Pittsburgh that you find in NYC, LA, LON, PAR, BER, or MEX?

This thread really isn't appropriate to discuss the cool and fun discount shopping in big cities around the world, but, I should probably write a book about it!

:D

When did they match their fares?

And the churn goes on,

Seriously these threats are useless. You will storm off to AA (and no we don't care) and someone on AA will storm off to Delta.

Different passengers, same revenue. Delta won't care.

(And yes, they will all do EXACTLY the same thing LOL!)

Really???? They go into withdrawals if they don't get their pre-flight beverage and you expect them to live without knowing that they get their preferred seat and won't be able to come on here and scream about how they were cheated out of an upgrade????

I don't think so!

Imminent death of the Internet SkyMiles predicted, film at 11

It's a total :rolleyes:-sandwich, sure, but not so drastic that I'm going to storm off or think it will kill the program.

It's not the UG issue that makes the tickets so bad. The bigger issues are:

-you can't select a seat until check in, so you are probably in a middle seat
-You can't make any changes to the ticket at all, so no SDC.
- I would not expect the redeposit benefit to extend to BE award tickets, because they can't be redeposited. standard tickets can, with a fee. In this case, my guess is that DL will say that there is no fee to be waived because the option just does not exist.