Ever-widening gap between Basic and Main fares
 

Simple non-stop booking ATL-LAS

$317 BE
$447 MC

In other words, a 41% surcharge to select seats. That seems rather wild to me.

Basic it is then…

Seat selection, mileage accrual, sky club access, ecredit "refundability", etc... DL has been working hard to justify that surcharge by making the BE experience worse.

Delta has me programmed to never search basic fares.. For me the PM benefits (comfort+ at booking) and a decent seat are still worth it. But after I drop down to GM in 2027 that calculus may change. I don't expect many Comfort upgrades at T-3 days, and First will be laughable. but than I can't use the sky club with basic.. so that stinks too.

LAS is somewhat of a domestic outlier market as DL will often have larger differentials due to ULCC competition. Presumably, this is a roundtrip booking as nominal difference on one-way fares is $65. Differences on roundtrip BE fares (with Sat stay) can get as high as $80 each-way on both ATL-LAS and DTW-LAS with BE roundtrip fares starting at $239 and Main starting at $399. There's also a hostage hub effect involved here. If you check fares from nearby airports that are not hostage hubs (like CLE-LAS and CHA-LAS), fare differentials are a more reasonable $45 each-way.
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At times, there have been signficantly higher differentials in the past. MSP-LAX was going for $199 roundtrip in BE vs. $477 roundtrip in Main back in spring of 2024 -- https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/36143714-post11.html.

$65 each way for a better MC seat on a 4- hour flight is a no-brainer even forgetting all the other benefits of MC.

There is more to it.

For better or worse (worse lately), I am an AA hostage, but I'd still argue, it's not just a "surcharge to select seats." You don't earn mileage on either airline now in BE. On AA, at least, I would get seat selection and bags with status. I change flights too much and value OWE too much to give up all mileage accrual, etc. Additionally, while it's a terrible use of miles, sometimes I just use those bonus miles to upgrade--like I have this coming week. So I see that "surcharge" as more than just extra charges for seats. Now that UA is eliminating mileage earning on BE (except for card holders with status, or whatever the latest check boxes are), it is about the same across the Big 3 board. Pick your poison or fly Frontier, I figure.

While they have become more restrictive with time, they were never solely just about not being able to select a seat for free. When Delta first introduced them, they were not only non-refundable, they were also completely non-changeable. Now that Main fares have no change fees, they allow changes to Basic fares for a fee. But they have always had additional restrictions on changes that weren't present on Main fares. Delta also has not allowed same-day confirmed/same-day standby changes on them since they were introduced.

I ended up booking WN instead.

$297 for “Choice”. Includes seat assignment. Fully cancelable for eCredit. Non-stop.

The Delta value prop just isn’t there for me anymore.

Odd, as their cheapest Choice fares on ATL-LAS start at $319 roundtrip with taxes (EF fares include 7.5% US Excise Tax, but not other taxes). Although their fare sales normally run Tue-Thu, so I guess if you bought yesterday they were still on sale then. Reading the WN forum is interesting as most there seem pretty negative on introduction of Basic fares and assigned seating. Also, numerous complaints about fares out of OAK as WN seems to be taking advantage of their hostage hub flyers just like DL does with it's hostage hub flyers.

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Makes perfect sense. The reality is that there are a few things any airline is selling you: the route, the seating conditions, the seat location, IFE, the food, lounges, flight times, nonstops... If I was an infrequent flyer and retired, I'd strongly consider flying "not delta" to save a significant amount of money. These decisions are highly individualized and dependent on a lot of very personal factors. For example, how much money is it worth to you to fly on an airline with less frequent service? Or are the connections worth it to you? (I realize you're not connecting here, I'm making a more generalizable statement).

We have a few active threads discussing essentially the same points.

DL likely took WN more seriously at ATL immediately after the AirTran aquisition. But since signficantly downsizing the ATL operation, that's clearly no longer true. For comparison, here are current cheapest WN/DL fares on BNA-LAS where WN basically has a "hub" (even though they don't like that term), while DL does not. You can see upfare pricing from Basic is $40 each-way on both carriers. Back when WN had their cheapest fares as "Wanna Get Away" fares, upfare pricing was generally in the $20 neighborhood each-way. So you can see why they got pressured into going the Basic fare route to raise more revenue.

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The age old issue. Do I spend more to maintain status?

Honestly I can't see how you get to yes on that question. The few scraps leftover for people with status can easily be purchased outright. Perhaps the only argument I can think of is IRROPS. And even that is hit or miss. Call the diamond desk and get a newbie and you will know.

I haven't but I might run a spreadsheet of tickets where I record the DL, UA, and AA costs for a ticket to maintain status as opposed to what I actually spent for class of service and schedule. I am thinking the status costs are 15%-20% surcharge.

35 years ago when I started flying for business rather frequently, the answer was yes. Because for the first 25 years, you could get upgrades most of the time and redemption for award flights were reasonable. Nowadays, there are routinely a dozen or more on the UG list for 1 seat, and award redemptions are insane. My days of chasing status ended 10 years ago when I saw how the airlines were monetizing domestic F and business.

The answer is "it depends". Are you comparing apples and oranges? E.g. nonstop on DL from ATL vs 1-stop on AA? What are the times and frequencies of each airline, etc.

I find value in DM. Tangible benefits include the C+ upgrade at booking and the Choice Benefits. One question that has to be evaluated when pricing out a RUC/GUC is "would I pay for F on this flight?" My answer is generally "yes." So my GUCs save me on average $8k-ish and my RUCs save me maybe $3k. It may be more. I don't place value on F upgrades since they're random and infrequent. I'm not sure how much better customer service is, and I'm not sure how to value it.

But as I posted in another thread, I have a trip coming up where the apples-to-apples comparison doesn't justify paying DL/AF/KL's 60% premium over the alternatives. The upside for me is I doubt this will make or break having DM next year... as we've also discussed a bunch, there isn't tangible benefit for having $28,001 MQDs.