why would that be rare? The type of people who burn OPM flying international J are extremely likely to also buy domestic tickets with their own money for leisure.

It is very common. Loads of US corporations have travel policies of Business overseas and coach domestically.(Or some variation like Business over 7 hours and coach under 7) Lots of non executives such as folks in auditing, procurement, or engineers fly to Europe and China in business but in US have to buy coach.

Delta has almost reached this point. 88% (by DL reporting) of F inventory is now revenue, leaving only 12% for status upgrades.

Yeah, but (1) they're still hanging them out there and (2) not all routes or flights are created equal - the last flight of the night into an outstation might still be running upgrades for 2/3 of the seats while JFK-LAX might sell out organically.

Given DL's earnings report (F revenue is up, Y revenue is down), I'd be quite shocked if we don't see somewhat-larger F cabins creeping into planes over the next few years. Nothing massive like going from 12 to 52 seats, but I think the next round of refits will see a lot of planes add a row or two of F since if DL is selling 88% of F (per above), that means there are routes where they're leaving folks in Y who would pay for upgrades and locking out elites.

(I'm also curious as to how RUCs/GUCs count in the revenue-vs-status-upgrade formula.)

If they're only flying two times a year and already in paid D1 (and were previously in paid D1, just not previously getting DM out of it), how are they impacting your upgrade percentage if they aren't actually flying in Y tickets to be upgraded on?

Sure. The point is: understand the landscape and Delta's clearly communicated strategy with F revenue, and manage upgrade expectations accordingly. Delta's been telling us for, what, a decade? My only complaint, which I've stated before, is that the "upgrade window" is essentially a non-existent benefit at this point. It happens so rarely that it is possibly getting close to false advertising. (But, again: understand that, and manage expectations. WFBF is the reality now.)

it's a rounding error.

Also, R/GUCs generate no revenue for Delta, so I assume they are not included in revenue numbers.

I'd argue that those RUC/GUC do generate revenue for DL... pax are enticed to fly DL to use those certs over another airline, and also to buy a higher fare class such as PS in order to upgrade to D1 instead of booking cheapest econ classic in the back... or not booking DL at all.

One of my nephews is a hardware engineer and has to go to China 4-6 times per year. His company buys him coach fares to China (only department heads get biz) but he sometimes gets a PlusPoints UG because he is 1K with UA. He's never gotten a domestic PlusPoints long haul UG, and has only ever been upgraded on short hops.

I do what i can to avoid using guc on dl as i find the other options to be superior. Kl, vs, af and ke all deliver their service at a much higher level than dl in my experience. Plus I get higher mqd earn when flying the others.

Okay, but that ticket purchase still goes down as Main (or PS) revenue, not First/Business revenue.

Companion Upgrades
 

Two thoughts.

One, I think they need to abolish the companion upgrade, giving Medallion members a better shot of a rare complementary upgrade.

Two, first class upgrade buy up offers are wildly unfair. I’m willing to pay for an upgrade but these non-Medallion low offers to first class are just offensive when not applied fairly by their artificial intelligence fare models.

I’ve pretty much given up on Delta and now just buy my way into whatever I want on whatever airline fits my need. I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised with the Frontier Gold Status experience, I’ve been upgraded on every flight to the UpFront Plus which is just like Delta Comfort Plus BUT the middle seat is blocked - a huge amazing advantage.

I really have shifted to this line of thinking and I'm actually pretty satisfied. I've done particularly well reversing to EU-US-EU instead of EU-US-EU and finding PS fares from in the 1000-1300USD equivalent range.


It kind of reminds me of the old being happy to find a reasonable M (when only YBMs were eligible and Y and B were absurd).

It was a little tough to swallow when it was ~double the sLUT fare at the time, but it was a pretty consistent way to take advantage of the certs (and miles upgrades for 25K too, if I'm not mistaken,) and sit up front.

I've been able to predict (with a very high degree of reliability) if I'll be able to get an upgrade or not...but very often one leg will auto-upgrade at the window while the other will take its own sweet time.

As I said further up, however, I'm hopeful that the planes that are "accidentally" ending up with over 40F will give DL a testbed and they might start expanding F by a row or two going forward (so 12F would become 16F/20F), especially given the apparent decline in Y.

To be clear - I wouldn't actually mind DL rolling back on the complementary upgrade model in favor of issuing additional RUCs, or alternatively just flat-out giving Medallions a discount on the difference between Y and F on a given flight in lieu of upgrades. At least DL just about always has a proper snack basket in F (whereas half of the time AA just has a snack bar or pretzels...pivot to premium my ASCII).