When UA moved to MQD it didn’t bother me as I was mostly flying international biz class with OPM. These are the customers DL is rewarding - the rest can pretty much go to hades.

personally I would not find DL lifetime Silver to be very useful at all. At least with UA lifetime Gold I am guaranteed C+ aka E+ seats for my entire family at the time I purchase tix plus Group 1 boarding. YMMV

I’m happy too, as someone who tends to fly less frequently but usually on more expensive tickets. It seems to me like the new system has much more economic logic to it. When you think about it, why would an airline want to favor someone who flies 25 times in a year, spending $200 per ticket, over someone who flies once on a $5000 ticket? Most on Flyertalk don’t like the change, which is understandable because a large part of the community is all about optimizing the old, illogical system for their own benefit (“mileage runs” being a prime example; I suspect we won’t hear so much about “dollar runs” going forward). Also, the whole system of upgrades based on status is weird when you think about it. Imagine a restaurant saying the way to get steak is to be a very frequent customer, and when you arrive, if you are lucky, you might get “upgraded” from chicken to steak. Just sell steak to those who want steak, and those who want first class seats (as I usually do) can pay for them. And the logical way to deal with unoccupied first class seats is to have people bid for them at the gate, with cash, on the app. I made AA EXP last year based purely on credit card spend and I was almost completely unaffected, because I’m still not going to buy a coach seat and take a chance on getting upgraded when I can just buy a seat in first and guarantee that my whole party will be sitting together.

Very classy. I’m sure that’s exactly what an airline like Delta, trying to portray itself as a luxury airline, would like to do.

THat's not what he said, he's a SM MM, so he feels his benefit will be better. I'm exactly the same. 1MM, and I stopped flying them when the $250K Threshold was announced. I just buy DL when I go to Europe and fly WN now. It's not super great, but the CP is great, I live near a good WN airport and I can get anywhere in the US. I love the freedom to choose my Int'l flights while staying mostly loyal to WN in US.

Every airline is doing it. FCM has brought average joes and jane's the experience of seats upfront, and has brought sorrow and dismay to status holders hoping for an upgrade.

Cash talks.
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There is currently one first class seat remaining on the 3:25 pm flight from MIA to JFK this Sunday 9/17, which Delta is offering for sale at $1500. I don’t see this as any more or less “classy” than offering it to the highest bidder at the gate if it remains unsold, as opposed to giving it away for free to some lucky customer. It doesn’t literally have to be an eBay style auction, of course, they could also send upgrade offers to passengers’ phones at steadily decreasing prices until someone accepts.

Might as well just entirely eliminate the notion of elite status and upgrades then and sell or auction everything off.

Consider the route network as an ecosystem. If an airline doesn't fill the domestic flights with $300 r/t tickets and those flights go away, they lose the seats on that plane that were being used to feed the international flights. If they lose feed to the international flights, those flights become no longer economically viable, and the airline can't sell the $5000 ticket.

A butterfly flapping its wings in Kansas City leads to the slow demise of the TATL network out of Atlanta.

Why not both? I expect them to continue to dangle the carrot to get people to make irrational choices. They’re not going to eliminate their loyalty program when that’s the only thing that makes them money.

I’ve flown a lot between LGA/JFK and MIA this year and every time I have peeked at the upgrade list there have bern something like 20-30 people on it, usually with zero seats in F available (one time there were 2 seats available but that was an exception). Based upon this, the vast majority of people who have strived to get elite status in the hope of getting an upgrade will have been disappointed. I admit that this may not be representative of Delta as a whole, and possibly there are routes where upgrades tend to be more successful, but I suspect for these routes the extra cost of just paying for F in the first place would be quite modest.

You're not wrong about the economic logic, especially in today's environment. But there's more at play. Airlines in the past have considered it necessary to develop customer loyalty to the airline. In part due to cyclical periods of travel, in part due to captive customer theories, etc. DL appears to be changing course pretty drastically and in a single change to the program. I personally don't think there's anything morally good or bad about companies that try to engender loyalty and those that don't. The gas station isn't focused on customer loyalty. They're focused on the best location they can put their gas station, on the best corner, on the best side of the street. Their customers will come to them because they're there, and they offer the best option. And they offer the best option to the person who's driven down that freeway 10k times and has to often get gas, just as they are the best option to the person that's only going to drive down the freeway once in their life and happens to need gas at that time. This certainly doesn't make the gas station a mean, immoral, or ethically challenged. It's simply how they choose to get customers. While emotions can affect your loyalty, loyalty itself is not an emotion. And DL seems to be changing from an airline that in the past has attempted to engender customer loyalty, and now is not particularly focused on customer loyalty. It doesn't make them a bad company. It doesn't mean people should get fired. It's, what I consider to be, a bold move.

This is certainly not to say that DL doesn't want loyal customers. It's just saying "we already have enough loyal customers, we can lose some and be fine, and even though we don't specifically incentivize loyalty, there will be people who our program does incentivize, and those people will stay loyal/(hopefully) become loyal to DL."

I agree. Below is my post in the main thread.

I'll add that my domestic trips are mostly reward "free" MC fares that I hope get upgraded to first class so decreasing the competition for these seats makes me happy.

Thats a way of ensuring people understand that the Silver status comes with the benefits available at the time of renewal. The MM silver won’t go away, but the benefits are sure to change while one has it.

Having moved most of my flying to other carriers, MM FO status has some benefits:

• Preferred seats at booking, including exit rows. Even when I was PM/DM, I'd regularly decline C+ "upgrades" in favor of exit rows.
• Zone 1 boarding still has enough overhead space available that you're not going to have your bag checked.
• Waived first bag fee.
• I actually got an F upgrade at booking when I purchased a same day ticket a few weeks ago. Granted, it was a random point to point route on an RJ, and if I had stayed in Y I would have had a row to myself, but still...

That said, I now have first tier status in all the alliances, so it's not much of a tie-breaker for me anymore.

Sounds like you are the kind of customer DL enjoys having