The hairdresser/personal trainer is a horrible analogy for this scenario in every possible way. A hairdresser does not have the cost structure nor the operational constraints of an airline. It's even worse than comparing a child's lemonade stand with McDonald's (and at least both of those care in the same sector).

But why do they need to charge more? I do not see the correlation.

If they alter the schedule, passengers should be able to receive their money back and take their business elsewhere. After all, they pay for specific flights at specific times.

If airlines want to keep passengers money, they have two options:

• Strive for operational excellence, better timeliness and organization
• Offer additional perks to passengers to accept a schedule change

With the current set up, where airlines are omnipotent and all-powerful, there's a race to the bottom. We can clearly see this in the US. Service is horrible, no decent meals on trans-continental flights, unhealthy snacks, dirty planes (buses).

When you look East or West where there is REAL competition, you see much improved service and treatment of passengers. Further, the EU regulations now force airlines to be much better at organization and scheduling. KLM for instance is SUPER consistent with times, and they BARELY change schedule. When passengers buy tickets, they know with 99.99% certainty that their flight would occur at a time/day they purchased it for.

In the end, nobody forced airlines to do business they are in. If they are not happy with keeping schedules that consumers pay for, then maybe they should consider quitting?

Again, this is fighting the analogy with irrelevant references to matters that have nothing to do with the analogy. (If you think you have a better analogy, feel free to offer it up!) And it's a perfectly nice analogy to illustrate the basic point that a customer who is promised a service at a 5pm should -- based on principles of fairness -- be entitled to his money back if the provider of that service switches the time to 3pm.


Let's dispel the notion that airline reductions in service quality are passed on to the customers as lower fares. What the quality reductions do is enrich the corrupt airline execs who pocket all the extra cash for years, until the stock crashes and they collect the next round of billion$ and trillion$ in taxpayer bailout ca$h.

But the passengers that booked the 6:30 AM flight either (a) really needed to be on the 6:30 AM flight and picked that over the 8:30 AM or (b) weren't willing to pay the premium to begin with - therefore, they valued that "better" flight time less than $200. So it's not a net wash, everyone is still made worse off (except for Delta who captures the benefit).

Schedule changes happen. It's fine. It's not a big deal. But if the schedule changes materially - and let's be clear, a 2 hour difference in departure on a domestic short haul flight is incredibly material - then a refund is warranted. I'm not talking about the +/- 5 minute adjustments of course. But anything over an hour is clearly material. Not just because of people's schedules, but because that is (roughly) the "time cost" of a connection which creates a very different competitive environment for fares.

I don't see how giving refunds for a flight change of >1 hour would really create that much difference in terms of costs - this COVID situation aside. It's marginal at best. Airlines would slightly reduce the amount of speculative scheduling they do. They'd potentially do a small fraction fewer scheduling changes. It's not a sky-is-falling cost difference.

On the flip side, if you decide that you want the 6:30 AM because you value $200 over sleeping in, and DL pulls the 6:30 AM flight and shifts you to the 8:30 AM flight, DL does not come to you to ask for the $200 premium - you now get the savings of $200 and the benefit of sleeping-in.

It's certainly a debate about what's right, but it's also a "be careful what you ask for, you may just get it". It could possibly be changed by DOT policy and the DOT becomes more strict on airlines and forcing them to provide more when they change schedules by more than a certain amount (say 1 hour). But there many be other consequences, such as increased airfares or DL or other airlines becoming far less flexible with it's current schedule change policies. Right now, DL will let you rebook anything that day without a change fee or fare difference and often even switch days (I've also had luck even switching airports for no fee/fare difference). Maybe as a response, DL says "We'll only rebook you without fee or fare difference to a flight within 3-4 hours of your original time, unless no option is available". You may see some sort of step policy that says "if the schedule is changed this much more than X number of days before departure, these are your options, if changed this much Y days before departure, these are your options", etc.

I can say in my own experience, I feel I've come out ahead many times more in this respect (booking cheaper flights and then due to schedule changes, getting far more desirable options) than I've come out behind, both with DL and other airlines.

The issue is that the sleeping in was valued at less than $200 - for that individual, it was only worth anywhere from $0 to $199. It was never equal to $200 - otherwise they would have picked the 8:30 AM flight. So, no, it doesn't come out as a wash. In fact, in some cases the 8:30 AM flight may be worth even less to that individual because they really needed to be on the 6:30 AM flight. Inherently in any economic system where actors self-select for their own preferences and utility curves, reducing from 2 option sets to 1 option set will always result in a loss of total buyer value. Delta pockets the "destroyed" surplus for themselves.

I agree that Delta has been historically flexible and I've benefited from that flexibility, but candidly I would rather have clear guardrails rather than rely on Delta's goodwill. I realize this is not the case for everyone, but to me the whole exception/waiver/etc dance feels like haggling to me and I hate haggling. If Delta wants to be a customer-friendly airline, then they should be willing to be customer-friendly in their contract - and not selectively reward (or, indirectly punish) passengers based on the agent they happen to call.

Everyone wants a policy that they feel best benefits them. But Delta is an airline that serves close to 200 million passengers per year (not counting the dip in COVID). DL is going to make policy that is best for itself and best for the majority of passengers and majority of cases. While anyone can come up with a situation that doesn't fall within what the general policy was designed to cover, DL's policy is fine for most passengers. Again, current COVID19 environment aside, most passengers who are booking down to the hour of their schedule are booking at a point inside of 30-60 days when schedules have been mostly finalized and are probably rarely impacted by advance schedule changes (day of departure schedule impacts or weather waivers in the few days prior not counted here; that's a different issue). Most people booking further out than that have far more flexibility and the number of people booking 2 months or more in advance and thus may be hit by advance schedule changes but who have such limited flexibility that they were booking down to the hour and also can't take any other options offered by the airline is probably a pretty small percentage. Hence my point that I and most other passengers have probably benefited more from DL's currently policy than we've "lost" because of it.

I agree that is customer unfriendly just because it technically less people qualify for the refund and this change only benefits the airline.

However in all the talk of "fairness" how many customers take advantage of the policy and hope for a schedule change to get their money back which messes with the airlines cash projections. My point is only that it is a for profit business and you can be customer friendly so much that you don't have a sustainable business.

I hear that it is frustrating that you make commitments based on what you expect from other businesses and they let you down and you don't get your money back. UPS completely suspended their service commitments so you pay for 3 day service they get it there in 5. No money back and you just deal with it.

Point is businesses are trying to stay alive right now, so this move isn't uncommon and as things go it isn't game changing. For me personally I couldn't care less about adding 30 minutes.


Also, as an aside one thing I have learned on this forum is analogies are completely pointless. The haircut one was especially terrible.
:D

Among the hundreds of millions of air pax each year, probably a very very very small number of pax even know that you can get a refund if there's a long enough schedule change. And an even smaller number would even be in a rare situation where they are hoping to cancel the flight anyway and were waiting until a schedule change so they can take advantage of the system and get their money back. FlyerTalk is hardly a microcosm of the flying public.

US airlines aren't struggling to stay alive, and there's zero indication that this change was made to help them stay alive; it's just business as usual in the airline industry -- continuing to make the experience more and more miserable for their customers. Execs know they can screw over their customers and make record profits and line their pockets handsomely, and that the US govt will bail them out the next time things go south.

I disagree with that assertion. Yes, US airlines have liquidity in the short run, but cash burn is definitely not sustainable - and it is clear that COVID will be a long drawn out affair (especially in the US). Fighting for survival is definitely the right word to use. They mortgaged their assets in order to survive - once this money dries up, bankruptcy is the next step. Keep in mind that the cash burn rate at the end of Q2 included CARES which expires shortly. Delta's projection of being cashflow-neutral by end of year assumed at least a 60-70% demand recovery by then which is looking increasingly unlikely. They are still fighting for survival.

This was definitely COVID-related. Delta does NOT want to issue refunds. They'll issue vouchers all day long. But refunds? They'll do everything they can to avoid it. Going from a 90 minute to 120 minute window for refunds greatly increases flexibility to Delta for eliminating flights without risking a refund. 120 minutes opens up a lot of new connecting options - or for a mega-hub like Atlanta where there are hourly flights somewhere, they can cut more half of them and guarantee that no one is refund-eligible.

In this regard, it's unfortunate because they made this change in the context of COVID but it is highly unlikely they will ever go back to the old terms post-COVID.

Let's dispel the notion that a bankruptcy filing means shutting down and going out of business. As we've seen from all the recent airline "bankruptcies," the US Bankruptcy Code is a tool that the US airlines have in their pocket to hit the reset button, restructure themselves, screw over their creditors, and help their execs get rich again. The US government made very clear that it's not going to let the US airlines go out of business. If there's no threat of going out of business, there's no fight for survival. It's just a numbers game.

I completely agree, hence the reason I think this is a complete non issue.

You must not be a financial restructuring / bankruptcy attorney. If you were you'd realize that senior executives that are primarily compensated with equity options that takes multiple years to vest. And that those would become worthless (or near worthless) post-bankruptcy. Because the first "creditors" wiped out are the people that own the company (equity). You're right that the airlines would - in some form - continue to operate, but everyone who has any vested interest in Delta from an equity perspective would be naked in such an event.

I understand the reason for DL making this change and it will effect flyers in different ways. When I am travelling for leisure to Europe for a week, and there is a 2 hour change with an additional hour at my connection, I shrug and say who cares. However, when I am going out and back for a meeting in the same day, 119 minute shifts on the outbound and return can result in serious issues. Even with the 90 minute rule, there could be issues. Fortunately, the couple of times that happened to me, DL has empowered staff to do what helped rather than follow things to the letter.

Overall, I think this is a non-issue for the vast majority of DL flyers. Joe Sixpack heading out for his weekend vacation is not going to have his vacation ruined if he arrives 2 hours later rather than 1.5 hours later. The Flyertalk road warrior that is scheduling an itinerary down to the minute can get DL to refund a 91-119 minute change if it truly effects the purpose of the trip. It should also be noted that with any change, you can request something different.

Going back to the barber analogy, it would be more like the barber says he cannot do 5:00 anymore, but can do 3:01 or 6:59. If neither of those work, he'll put your money on a voucher you can use later, but the price for the haircut may change.

Not sure about that...Ed's cash compensation in 2019 was just under $4.5mil. Granted he also received around $12.5 mil in stock and options, but $4.5 is nothing to sneeze at. The definition of "rich" is relevant here, but I am sure most of the world would consider themselves rich after a short period of earning $4.5/year.

In the end no one is forcing you to buy an airline ticket either.

(I don't personally believe that's valid as a blanket excuse to justify any customer-unfriendly policies the airlines can come up with, but it's your logic...)

I agree with you. I was just responding to another person who was making all sorts of excuses to justify a customer unfriendly policy.

Any business has its own peculiarities and problems. Saying that they cannot commit to a particular schedule due to a cost structure is not an excuse. Many businesses are challenged with all kinds of cost structured and they need to deliver services customers pay for. If they can't deliver, then they should probably change industries or businesses.

None of this has to do with the simple fact that DL does not contract or otherwise agree to maintain a specific schedule and that the customer expressly agrees that DL may not be able to do so.

If you have a ticket contract which includes provisions by which DL agrees to run within 5 minutes of schedule, you have a beef. Otherwise, the assertion that DL has contractually committed to a specific schedule means that you either disregarded the contract when you purchased or read it but choose to ignore it now.

Correct. You're literally the only one in this entire thread fighting an argument with a straw man who is somehow disagreeing that DL *can* write its contract in a way that allows them to make a 2 hour schedule change. (Cf. https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/32576840-post16.html ) There's not a single person in this thread who disputes that DL *can* write its contract in such a manner. The debate is whether it's consumer unfriendly.

And, that's what the conversation is about above. Just because Delta or other airlines indemnify themselves from any obligation does not mean that they shouldn't have that obligation. We provided an example of a barber who wants to shift a haircut by 2 hours and then holds on to the money without refunding.

Many businesses indemnify themselves from certain outcomes. In many cases they don't even need to explicitly state the outcomes. In the US, the UCC codifies the concept of good faith.

Example 1: In most cases, if I hire a lawyer and agree to pay them for their time and expenses, I don't get a refund if the outcome is not what I wanted. When lawyers take on a client and payment is only made if you win, the lawyer is much more selective or charges more for their time.

Example 2: If I want a construction contractor to finish a job on a specific date and they miss that date because the city fails to issue a certificate of occupancy, I'm going to be sued if I don't pay (or the property seized if they placed a lien). I also won't be offered a refund if I paid upfront. If I brought action to avoid paying or recover funds, I would likely fail if the contractor demonstrated that they put forth a good faith effort.

In many situations, including the two you list, it's perfectly fair and sensible for businesses to "indemnify themselves from certain outcomes" (as you call it). That doesn't mean it's fair and reasonable in every context. Here, it's just not reasonable for an airline "indemnify themselves" in such a way that their contract allows them to tell you to pound sand if they change your flight time by two hours and you want your money back.

People in this thread don't seem to like analogies, so I'll take the liberty of saying that I think your two analogies are not helpful. It seems perfectly logical and fair that a lawyer getting paid by the hour doesn't have to bear the risk of not getting paid if he loses a client's garbage case, and that a contractor doesn't have to bear the risk of not getting paid if he blew a deadline because of some governmental inaction that's outside of his hands. Further, the customers in these examples can bargain for these various outcomes -- or do business with other providers since the free market is actually at work in the legal and contractor industries. In contract, it's not at all logical for the airline pax to solely bear the consequences of the airline unilaterally shifting the flight time by two hours. Plus, the airline pax doesn't even have any bargaining power in this contract of adhesion situation in an oligopolistic industry.

How many people prepay for a haircut?

I do. I get a discount from SportClips for buying a six-haircut 'Season Ticket'. They don't punch my ticket until each haircut is finished and no guarantees on when I'll be seated.

The nature of transportation is that you can't guarantee schedules. A line must be drawn somewhere. Either 90 or 120 minutes seem reasonable to me. Do any major network carriers use a shorter cutoff? I don't know.

Why can't you guarantee schedules (published schedules, not IRROPS)? Airlines are actually atypical in this regard. Most rail CoC allow for refund-ability for any schedule change for example (they give you a voucher, but the voucher itself is refundable). If you do agree to a schedule change, Amtrak will even automatically refund you (via a refundable voucher) the difference between the original and rebooked itinerary (if cheaper).

Airlines take advantage of speculative schedules to do demand sensing. Basically teasing consumers with schedules they never intended to fly to see if - maybe afterall - they should fly the route. And then cut it later. It's little better than false advertising. Anything that reduces this is a good thing, not a bad thing. The idea that airlines are somehow special that they should be able to advertise routes they never intend to fly (or have not done enough due diligence on) is silly.

In fairness you are confusing the issue, your example of advertising routes they never intend to fly is a cancelation not a schedule change of 90 vs 120. Correct me if I am wrong cancelations are still refunded.

you are wrong. If they can put you on a plane that arrives within 2 hours on either side, you’re out of luck for your refund.

You bought this flight departing at 8am arriving at 11am? Nope, now you gotta be catching a flight at 6am, or else you’ll lose your money.

Similarly, you may be forced to take a 10am flight and miss important arrangements later in the day, just because someone else decided to change your schedule.

But they give the customer a very straight forward choice. Low price but airline is indemnified in case of a schedule change within a 2 hour window, or High price but complete flexibility. seems the OP wants the low price with no restrictions, what possible incentive does the airline have to offer that ?

We seem to be talking past each other.
1. What low prices are we talking about? Can I, like in Europe, fly the distance equal to London-Athens in the US, and still pay $20-$100? No. The same distance in the US would be $200-300. US airlines just feed everyone with crap about the choice between cheap prices and no-frills flying.

2. If I want flexibility for MY OWN choices, then I purchase my own fully changeable and refundable ticket. However, I’m typically very set and certain about my decisions and I purchase flights based on specific departure and arrival times. Why am I being penalized and forced to accept something that the AIRLINE decides to do? If they want flexibility, they need to pay to passengers. The payment here is the full refund to passengers who do not agree to new departure or arrival times.

We've already been through this. OP wants a lower price with restrictions on how THE CUSTOMER can change his ticket, and a higher price with no restrictions on how THE CUSTOMER can change his ticket. OP and many others are saying that, regardless of the price of the ticket, if THE AIRLINE makes a 2hr change, the pax can get a refund.

I was referring to "routes they never intended to fly", getting you to your same destination within 2 hours seems more than reasonable in the vast majority of cases.

Not ideal, not customer friendly, sure, but reasonable all the same.

Fair? No
just? No
killing the ideals of free market and consumer choice? Yes

Possible airline response: no point in selling discount advance purchase tickets if they don’t know exactly what schedule they operate. So instead you have to wait until schedule is finalized to be able to book, and ticket may well be far more expensive than the discount advance purchase ticket you would have otherwise bought.

Just so I understand, when a lawyer loses it's because the client had a "garbage case" and therefore the lawyer should be paid because it was the client's fault. Are you basically saying that it is not possible for a lawyer to forecast their ability to generate revenue because either (a) they don't know how many "garbage cases" they will get or (b) they are not sure of their ability to win even when they have non-garbage cases? Thus, the client should bear the risk of that the lawyer will not achieved the desired outcome. Is the legal profession special and should not be held to the same standard as an airline? A lawyer should be able to forecast their revenue based on historical performance so that they can charge appropriately on the cases they win and refund when they fail.

Governmental inaction is a good reason to miss a deadline but weather, airport delays (say due to some other flight having an emergency), etc is not a good reason to miss a deadline?

According to a paper (DOI: 10.1109/IC3INA.2014.7042596), the departure delays for Garuda Airlines from Djuanda in excess of 120 minutes is less than 0.5% of the flights. Those values are also consistent for United Airlines departures from Denver. According to a NASA paper (AIAA 2002-5866), 91% of the delays (in the year 2000) are due to problems outside the control of an airline (weather, traffic delays, runway delays, and ATC equipment problems). In general, airlines have done a good job in reducing delays due to factors within their control.

At what point does non-ideal and not customer friendly cross over into unreasonable?

Apologies, shouldn't have said "route" as that implies a specific city pair served nonstop as opposed to multiple.

As an example of what I am talking about - check out ATL-ORD on December 25th. Even in a non-COVID world, there is zero chance that Delta is actually going to fly 10 ATL-ORD flights that day (last year they flew only 6 flights). Just like United will not fly 8 flights that day. I'm picking Christmas as an extreme example, but if I was to book a flight today, there is no way I'll know which flights they will actually fly. In normal times, this is about the time of year they finally start trimming holiday schedules now that summer is on the downswing. Of course, with COVID, who knows how long they will wait to make adjustments (although I am of course willing to excuse this year for that).

They're happy to keep the full schedule to collect data on when people want to fly and run optimization models for when they prune the routes system-wide. And they're also happy to charge for a specific time within a 2-hour window: one way, the 8:28 AM flight is $170. The 10:13 AM flight is $59. I can go check out and Delta is happy to extract a 288% price premium for picking a specific time within a two hour window, but interestingly there is no warning (without reading the revised CoC) when I go to book this flight that Delta could decide to put me on the 10:13 AM flight (priced 65% off) with no recourse if they like.

I picked an extreme example (Christmas day) to make a point, but this kind of stuff occurs (on a smaller scale) all the time. This bothers me. Maybe it doesn't bother you, but it bothers me.

We are not talking about same day changes which can occur due to extraordinary circumstances

In case of airlines, we are talking about schedule changes they make weeks or months in advance of the actual flights that pax had already paid for.

Great question, the answer probably isn't cut and dry. But we are talking 2 hours here. Any other mode of transportation could be delayed (granted perhaps not on purpose) by 2 hours just as easily. I don't know where the unreasonable line is, I give you that, but i do know moving to 120 minutes versus 90 doesn't cross it.

Fair enough, thanks for the clarification.

It doesn't bother me one iota. I can certainly see where you are coming from though. If there was more competition and someone could sell "no schedule changes" as a benefit, would you pay more for that? I honestly doubt there would be a market for that. I stand by my opinion that this issue is a non issue for the majority of Delta's customers. It isn't my intention to devalue your thoughts on it, I just believe you are in the minority.