Media Rate Baggage policy change
 

Apparently Delta has changed their policy for Media Rate baggage. The new policy:



https://www.delta.com/content/www/en...ems.html#media

Previously, pre-approval was not needed. Heads up to my fellow photo/film crews.

I would be willing to bet on too many amusing this. 25 bags at 50US/CAD is a steal.

For sure it was abused. But news crews rarely have 72 hours advance notice for breaking news coverage, and neither UA or AA require advance notice of any kind for their media policies.

I would bet the major news outlets will have agreements in place. This is more likely an issue with local news companies who are harder to verify/easier to fake being one.

In general, there are not pre-flight "agreements." Crews simply show up at the check-in counter, present valid, current media credentials -- either issued by their outlet and/or a government entity (e.g. state legislature, U.S. Congress, White House, police department, etc) -- the TA takes a look, verifies the name on the credential matches the name on the ticket, and that's it. It's about a 10-second process. The TAs are almost always exceedingly nice and understanding about it. As previously pointed out, often crews do not have 72 hours notice of their travels. Breaking news does not send a 72-hour "heads up."

However there likely is a corporate booking code on ticket for the major companies. Would make it easy. Also curious if it possibly doesn't apply to tickets purchased last minute. Rather if you're book more than three days out, there's more suspicion and also more time to verify.

If its straight up 72 hours no matter, agree that's awful. However DL doesn't always include all the details when releasing policies. Hopefully this is one of those cases.

Yes, that's how it worked for years and years, until this recent change. No more. I've had colleagues in both the news side (photographer for Reuters) and the commercial filmmaking side be denied media rate in the past two weeks as they hadn't been pre-approved 72h in advance.

The old policy was in place as recently as September 28th (from the Internet Archive: Special Items | Baggage : Delta Air Lines). It's a bit unreasonable to change longstanding policy with less than two weeks notice (Oct 8 activation date), and with no formal notice to anyone other than an obscure policy change buried on the website.

Were their tickets bought more than 72hrs out? I was on phone booking a trip just now, I just asked DL DM agent to find out policy for last minute tickets. She called and was told there's supposed to be an exception granted for tickets bought last minute. She stated the policy is only supposed to apply if tickets were bought more than 3 days in advance.

She also pointed out any tickets bought before the change in policy are still subject to old policy. Airline can't change bag policy for previously purchased tickets.

As usual you'll get airport agents that dont understand this.

I bet bloggers and YouTubers were claiming to be media and abusing this.

The last-minute ticket exception totally makes sense, especially when you consider the price of those tickets (not to say there aren't sometimes reasonable fares within 3 days). I would think that would still cut down 90% or more of the abuse.