DL gouges again
 

Or at least tries to.

My Brother and Sister-in-laws are in Seattle for medical treatment. Thew will be there for a total of 4 months.

My Sister-in-law is coming back to CVG for Father's Day. She was booking online and found a NW flight on DL metal for 150 something dollars RT. Just to be sure of the price, my Brother-in-law went to the DL site. The same seats, same flights, same everything was 450.00

What a royal screwing

This is pretty common with codeshares. DL and NW still have separate pricing, so take advantage of it while you can and book the cheaper NW ticket.

Yeah, the $150 is royally screwing the airline.

If it is "screwing the airline", it's the airline's fault. They post the prices, we do not!!!!!!!!!! So again I state. what a royal screwing

I cannot see how one could be upset at flights which are $300 lower on one site.

I agree that it's the airlines fault but $450 is not screwing or gouging.

Another example... looking at PHL to SEA. Fare from NWA website: $286 AI. Fare for the exact same flights on DL website: $554 AI.

This situation is no longer a codeshare arrangement. It's all one company. Yes, NWA and DL are still operating under separate FAA certificates, but the same corporate governance is calling the shots for both branches of the same company.

In my case, NWA was marketing the flights under the same flight numbers as the DL site. Please tell what there is about this situation that makes it a codeshare situation.

Granted, DL cannot achieve the fares that it wants or, for that matter, probably financially deserves. But that is the economy it is working in.

Your posts generally imply that anything that DL wishes to do to enhance the bottom line is OK (presumably, as long as it doesn't result in planes crashing to the ground or executives going to jail). If it is OK for DL to take advantage of a free market, is it not OK for the passenger to do so also?

My complaint here is the lack of transparency in how DL does it business. Marketing the same product under its two different websites, but posting a price on one site that is 2X the price on the other does nothing to inspire confidence in either the competence or the integrity of the company.

If this were a singular example, my attitude might be different, but these situations occur all too frequently. As I posted yesterday, in a five minute period I found a 50% difference between two fares for the exact same flights in the exact same fare class in two different searches on the DL website. And the search results were reproducible. An A class fare found when searching for A class and above was 50% higher than an A fare for the same flights found when searching for T class and above. And the higher fare was conspicuously identified as the lowest available fare for that itinerary.

Marketing a 50% higher fare as the lowest fare available (when the lower fare can be found in about 1 minute on the DL website), if not legally actionable, is patently stupid.

The delta DEFENDERS have surfaced again!!

I am not defending Delta. In fact, I am saying they are incompetent. I believe that $150 SEA-CVG R/T is under market price and they messed up. I am not sure I have seen a sub-$200 fare out of CVG to ANYPLACE, EVER! Granted, the free market is depressed right now. $450 is more like the going rate on that kind of route. It's hardly gouging. Having said this, I wouldn't complain about it, I would just purchase the $150 fare and take advantage of the situation.

In this case, the OP is very well versed with the CVG market and knows that $450 isn't anything out of the ordinary. Instead of saying that gouging was in effect, I might make a post to indicate how stupid Delta was for offering a $150 via another website.

When the merger is complete, will the fares be the always higher DL , or somewhere in the middle? Those of us that fly out of ATL won't even get kissed because the choice of NW's cheaper fares will be gone. :(

NW selling a DL-coded ticket is not a codeshare. NW selling a NW-coded ticket on DL metal is a codeshare.

They're still not done with the integration and both sell tickets on each others flights and codes.

They will be whatever the market is. Overall, their hope is that the merger pushes the price up for all airlines. Even the competition is rooting for this. There is no crystal ball to know what fares will be next week let alone next year.

What am I missing? Delta posts a fare and you either buy it or you don't. How is that gouging? As you yourself posted, you have choices and a cheaper fare was found. If you had no choice, that might be different.

Why are you linking this blog in every post?

Why is it such a bad thing to have both sides of an argument presented? There will always be two points of view (or more) on most every issue. Assigning labels to one side or the other does nothing to further the discussion...and, in fact, usually sends it down the wrong path. Was there anything you wanted to add to the discussion, or did you just drop in to pin a label on Indufan?

Agreed, and I believe the MODs said something a while back about this childish namecalling in a derogatory/malicious manner.

So the OPs family got to where they were going for $150 using codeshares vs. a higher fare on the operation carriers flight numbers. Excellent news, proves the market basis of our society works. Time to move on! This isn't unique to Delta at all. I see it as simple nitpicking with an agenda. Perhaps OP should post something similar in ALL airline forums with regard to fare differences and codeshares between oh I dunno, UA/LH, AA/BA, UA/US, NW/KL (particularly intra-Europe), on and on and on. I wager we won't see such threads (from this OP) because OAL are golden.