tearex

I notice the same.

I will also check EF a little before T-24 and compare the flight load for Y vs the seat-map. If the seat-map is pretty full (with the exception of the preferred seats) and there is a decent amount of C+ open compared to how many Y tickets are still being sold, I will actually delay checking in the hopes I do not get an automatic seat assignment. Then I hope for the gate assignment to C+ as GM. Small sample size, but appeared to work twice for me over the weekend.

bsagator

Yes, 7/10 so far this year, and I buy cheapest main cabin fare.

BenA

CMK10

I won't fly Basic Economy. I'm the sucker that Delta and the other airlines want, I'm too attached to my status and the benefits that come with it. I want the flexibility of SDC or stand by, I want the extra MQD to requalify. So I always pay the medallion tax.

drminn

I don't call it medallion tax, I call it paid seat selection. I check whether the flight is available on AF or KLM for the BE price. A lot of times it is. As a Delta PM I can select seats on AF for free. It doesn't give me access to C+, but I have enough drink coupons to knock me out.

Often1

The fare differential will continue to increase so long as DL is able to find willing purchasers. While that data is, of course, proprietary, one would presume that DL is finding willing buyers.

There is only one way to affect pricing and that is for a sufficient number of passengers not to fly. The opposite is apparently happening.

jrkmsp

brillb

I would thumbs down this kind of sentiment if I had the option. Nobody is sitting at a desk trying to mess with you. Also this whole concept of Basic Economy being invented as a "medallion tax", that description is wrong. It was invented to compete with Spirit and Allegiant in search results on Travelocity and Kayak. There are real human factors at play with price sensitive consumers seeing a list of possible flights on meta-engine search results. If your flights don't show up on the first page, you aren't making that sale. It's Delta's flavor of a bare bones offering to show up lower in the "sort by price" on booking sites, and they had to strip out everything they could to meet that price point internally.

Describing the price difference between Basic Economy (E) and V Main Cabin as "medallion tax" completely gets the point of it wrong and implies the wrong genesis of the product. Plus it's a term meant to be intentionally shocking or as someone else wrote "clickbait". The title of this post could have been "how do you decide when it is worth saving $ with basic economy or paying for regular main cabin tickets?", and been a better, happier, question.

btonkid12345

No. The genesis of the product was to turn the previously lowest main cabin fares into basic fares, and extract additional revenue from those "choosing away" from basic. For Delta at least.

For AA and United, it may have been more about what you're referring to, as they did strip their product itself down...but for DL, it was all about the revenue potential.

pgh234

The marketing and press releases appear to have really worked on you. When I fly from small City A to small City B and "main cabin" is $70 more than it used to be in a pre-BE world with no LCC in site anywhere near these city pairs...it is hard not to see it as a simple arbitrary increase in revenue for DL for the same thing I used to get.