Canarsie

Don’t ask me why, but in hearing all of the news surrounding the sweeping changes that will be announced later this month regarding Delta Air Lines in order to stave off bankruptcy, I wonder if Delta Air Lines is considering abandoning — or, at least reducing — the concept of A and D fares.

Could these fares be too low for forward-cabin class fares? Is Delta Air Lines actually profiting from them? Could Delta Air Lines be planning on re-introducing increased service and improved amenities in the forward cabins on its aircraft, thus rendering A and D fares unprofitable? Is it possible that A and D fares will remain, but eventually increase? Perhaps A and D fares will remain unchanged despite whatever changes are planned? What about bonus SkyMiles and double Medallion Qualification Miles?

I have absolutely no basis as to why I am asking my questions, but after recently booking an inexpensive, fully refundable and fully changeable A fare, my mind began thinking about the entire concept.

By the way, I am not worried or in an advanced state of panic. I merely thought this would be an interesting topic to discuss.

What do you think?

Kahuna

Wish these existed out of SLC!.

On SLC-JFK route, D fares are always $1,400+ but you can originate in LAS and travel via SLC outbound and inbound on an A for approx $600.

Cost per MQMs out of SLC is tres expensive, just like CVG. As soon as an alternative arrives, Delta will regret ripping-off customers at these hubs.

platbrownguy

There are also some absurd I fares to Europe now - ~$2000rt in B/E to many destinations from 11/1 on w/ 50 day advance purchase. I don't see how DL can be profiting from these fares and why they're even bothering to offer such low fares on these routes (and the domestic ones)... it seems that they could increase the A/D/I fares by about 50%, still be offering a good deal to the consumer, and also be helping their financial situation a bit.

If the $1200 RTs to HNL and $700 RTs to JFK are just designed to fill up the planes up front w/ paying customers, I honestly think they could charge $1800 and $1000 respectively and still do the job.

If DL continues to hurt financially, I can't forsee a $2000 B/E fare to Europe lasting.

JS

I don't know about that. The only A fare I bought was a $750 roundtrip LGA-LAS, and that just barely met my financial requirements. I certainly would not have paid $1000 roundtrip, so that means in my case, Delta earned an extra $750, and a $1000 fare would have earned them zero.

In the case of LAS, AirTran and America West set the fares. Delta can either match or ignore them, and ignoring them would be foolish, so they match.

Dovster

Why? In one word: Competition.

Air France will let me fly TLV-CDG-JFK in business class for $1197 (if I am flying with a companion paying the same fare).

Israir, Israel's smallest airline, will fly me TLV-JFK for $2000 in its Premium Business Class (which includes a free massage during the flight and gourmet meals). As a bonus, for taking this flight it will give me a free round trip to any of its European locations between Nov 1 and May 28.

Delta either has to keep up with market prices or lose its sales.

BTW, Canarsie, you have another thread talking about cheap ways to get MQM's. That AF flight would give me 22,704 MQM's at a cost of $0.053 per MQM and, as a GM in B/E, I would get 35256 SkyMiles to boot.

Cholula

My take on the A and D fares is that they are very profitable for DL. Consider where you’d be sitting and what you’d be paying if they didn’t exist.
You’d be back of the bus paying ½ of your A/D fare.
So for the extra $300-$500 you’re paying to move upfront, you get the bigger seat which is a fixed cost for DL. They’re paying for those seats whether or not anyone occupies them.
The only real cost for the A/D fares are the drinks and meal service. Most of the posters in this forum claim not to drink alcoholic beverages at all during their flight. But even if you slammed them down, that’s only an incremental cost of $20 or so to DL.
You’ve got a little extra labor cost for the FA working the front cabin but that’s really negligible.
And the FC food cost is another $20 bucks or so. Bottomline, there’s no way I can see that DL isn’t much, much better off with folks upgrading on these A/D fares. Unless, of course, they could fill the seats with all full fare FC pax.
But we know that isn’t going to happen on very many flights.

platbrownguy

I'd say between the 4 little bottles of Maker's and DiSaronno and the bottle of Bordeaux I put away on each flight, that's gotta cost 'em at least $35, no?

Oh, and Dovster, I had no idea other carriers were offering such low fares. Alitalia has them too. I stand corrected.

DeltaFlyingProf

I agree with Cholula's assessment. Since I teach aircraft design, I know that what determines the size of an aircraft (and consequently) its performance and cost, is the surface needed to put the passengers. That is why we get treated like sardines in the back. Once an aircraft design exist, of course one can start putting a cost per square foot. Now I have not a detailed geometrical analysis, but in domestic, FC may have about 60-80% more surface and thus this is the added equipment cost for DL. However, though Cholula mentions the added cost of FAs and booze, there is also a huge benefit in all the extra costs: baggage handling and all other ground cost are pretty much a per pax cost. Thus instead of having 2 pax paying X, you get 1 pax paying 2X (and I'd say more, a A is easily 4 to 6 times the LUT fare) and your ground costs are less. Thus A fares must be much more profitable than even K fares and some M fares (which we pretty much all upgrade domestically).
Per the same token, the question is more how much more floor space does a BE seat give you compared to a Y seat? Economy seat pitch is about 32" while BE is 60" and there are in a 767 6 BE abreast while there are 7 Y abreast. Thus the ratio of space is about 7/6*60/32 or roughly 2.2. So as long as the fare is at least 2.2 times the average Y fare, I fares are a good deal for DL. Looking at 2000$ vs 550$ and since they have 50 day adv. purchase while the 550$ probably would have a 15 day window, I'd say they are much better for DL than LUT fares!
As for Cholula's comment about cost of food, I remember seeing years ago the average amount an airline spends on food, and Pan Am at the time, with almost all international/long distance flights, was spending the most with a measly 8$ or so. I read that even on concorde (definitely the highest food service on AF) AF was spending only 30$ or so, so I'd say Cholula was exaggerating the cost of food and booze (after all they probably get the wine they serve for 10$ or less per bottle, and the liquors they serve are on the cheap sides and they get bulk pricings.

ThisDJ

Come on, people, don't be so gullible. It's hardly even a rumor; more like a guess (or "p" ing in the wind if you prefer).

Cholula

ME exaggerate??

Seriously, I was being generous with my food cost estimates and trying to figure all the various elements of getting the food produced, boarded and served. The actual food cost...and this comes as no big shock to any of us...is relatively low per meal.
And you are correct about the booze not costing as much as one would think. The airlines get an excellent cost on their liquor/wine/beer as various companies bid to have their scotch, gin, beer, whatever served to what they perceive as an upscale audience. So you’d probably have to consume a staggering amount of alcoholic spirits before DL was out more than $20 or so per passenger.

Spiff

Really? How much revenue is generated by putting non-revs in those $2k B/E seats when Medallions on M+ fares are denied a day-of-departure upgrade and decide to abandon Delta completely?

platbrownguy

And how much revenue is lost when the B/E-ticket-purchasing customers who are ordinarily willing to paying the $5500 for a ticket happen to find the $2100 fare?

bigjim

Another opinion in the mix, but obviously there weren't enough $5500 ticket purchasers to sell out first class. I don't know how they found that correct level - but I can assure you that $1200 is the most that I'm willing to pay for first class to Hawaii, no way in **** I'd purchase for $1800. So, I've purchased 6 of the $1200 first class tickets where I would have normally purchased only 4 $600 coach tickets. Sounds like a smart business move to me - but there sure are a lot of variables.

Flying_Duck

But they do!! - There are A-fares from SLC to any mainline destination. While the fares are much higher than those on routes where DL competes with AirTran, they are still much, much lower than the pre-2003 M/B fares. It is not too long ago that I had to pay more than $2,000 for a B/M fare SLC-Eastcoast whereas now I can buy an A or D-fare for under $1,500

To Canarsies initial worry: It seems to me that it always will be more profitable to put A-fares in front over upgraded M-fares for PM's, and -100 upgrades on surplus seats down to T-fares.

I think the real issue is not whether these fares will disappear, but rather whether FC will disappear. I guess Delta needs to make up it's mind as to whether it wants to cut the frills and truly become a mainline LCC a la SONG or build up it's frills to lure higher paying paxes, or at least to a point where it can justify a higher price for tickets than LCC whether in coach or FC. Whether there are enough high-paying paxes to pay for that is the current billion dollar question. Right now Delta seems to truly have a split personality and trying to do a little of both (maintaining/cutting frills) resulting in high paying paxes being p-offfed over the decline in frills and the low-paying paxes continuing to getting something for nothing as their fares can not keep the airline afloat.

Now the following is said by somebody who has no business education and probably is pretty ignorant about the intricacies of the airline industry in general, However, having said that, it seems to me that since Delta in principal is no different than the other majors, the current bleeding of them all will continue until one of them goes under/gets gobbled up under big fanfare, with the viability of the rest of them depending on their ability to capitalize on the compettitors demise and cut non-profit routes, implement realistic staffing numbers and staffing salaries, as well as having a more dynamic and flexible business approach.

Kahuna

Flying Duck: These are A fares in name only. $1,500 is hardly competitive for trips to East coast when there are A fares to Europe for that price in other markets.

When you can fly from LAS to JFK (via SLC in both directions) for less than 50% of the cost of the same seats from SLC, then these so-called A fares out of SLC are not a good deal.