sbagdon

Got this email last night, glad to see someone started a thread. Glad to see Sat-stay restrictions gone, and Plat redemption/redeposit fees waived. Sad to see close-in-redemption fees so high. Cosidering how so many saver awards are only available close-in, it's going to come down to "high-mileage and lower-fees 4 days out", or "low-mileage and high-fees 3 days out". Six-of-one, half-a-dozen-of-another. Either way, those that have to redeem at the airline's convienence, and not the pax convienence, are gonna pay... especially if they're not uber-Elite. The Plat Elite card isn;t an Elite card any longer... it's a frequent-shopper card, to get fees waived.

Gonna stink, if I drop out of Plat, in '10.

Steve B.

Watchful

The Good:

Qualify by segments + no Saturday night stay requirement + transferring miles between DL and NW @:-) (No Sat night stay is the best of the 3 for me...)

The Bad:

Increase reissue and redeposit fees - certainly not good news, but this is livable

The Ugly:

Award ticket fees <21 days before booking - this stinx - especially as it applies to silver and gold elites. I love being able to book flights for my son on rather short notice. This is major bad news for me.

The Unknown:

Three tier awards. If they are REALLY just splitting PerkPass between high miles (e.g. 60K and 40K domestic) - then who cares? I think most of us assume the real killer is that many of seats previously available at 25K will now be 40K, and those previously available at 50K will now be 60K. Meanwhile the impact is obscured by the three tier silliness. But we have lots of reasons to assume that this DL-initiated chart is REALLY going to be a boon to us consumers...right????

GUWonder

For some there may be no place to turn -- some are hooked on DL-NW whether they want to be or not -- but for plenty of others there are plenty of places to turn to be able to manage to avoid the "close-in fees" and other DL-management introduced award fees and DL-management-fostered creative mileage devaluation.

avidflyer

True but this kind of following the pack to the bottom (or leading them as it were) opens up a huge opportunity for another carrier to differentiate itself and sell the fact that they DONT charge these fees. At some point competition will kick back in and then customers will make decisions a little differently. Once you have been beaten down with fee after fee you may look at a carrier who has a less than stellar schedule just on principles. That is when the ground gained in the merger becomes useless. Greed usually loses in the end.

GUWonder

The "unknown" is not "unknown" -- the writing has already dried on the wall.

No assumption is needed to know that "many of seats previously available at 25K will now be 40K, and those previously available at 50K will now be 60K". This is already the way it has turned out to be at DL. Now this is coming to NW too.

pbarnette

But the problem is that nobody will take advantage of that "opportunity" because doing so is unlikely to actually improve that airline's bottom line. What is the incentive for any airline to do this? For the first time in a long time, the airline's seem to actually be concerned with making money, and I think this time it might stick.

GUWonder

DL's greedy mileage travel devaluation overkill is -- sooner or later -- going to invite a competitor -- inside the airline industry or outside of it -- to go on a big advertising blitz to pick up DL-NW "loyalty" program customers and getting those customers to abandon the DL-NW ship for better waters.

If most or all of the US airline lemmings follow DL management, then they all are making the same thing so many other "too big to allow to fail" big American businesses have done -- that is digging their own grave and then coming to Uncle Sam for another bail-out after having already fleeced the US taxpaying consumer.

3Cforme

What's the list of U.S. carriers with close-in fees?

DL/NW
AA
UA
CO
US

I mean, if this is the reason to give up on Delta, enjoy the first class upgrades and extensive trans-Pac network with Frontier EarlyReturns.

GUWonder

Nobody will take advantage of the likes of DL's greedy award travel costs? How about an airline that realize the FF programs do much to improve the airline's bottom line and are a sort of goose that lays a golden egg? How about a firm that is not an airline?

Some airline is going to kill the goose that laid the golden egg and DL management -- which seems intent on killing their own goose -- is in on course to do just that if they keep this up.

GUWonder

What you unsurprisingly left out is the fact even non-top-tier elites from some of the above carriers can avoid "close-in fees" on award travel bookings.

Also what was left out above is how DL has the highest potential award fees for award tickets of any US airline -- in other words, DL charges the highest possible fees for award tickets of any US airline.

Phil2016

Ugh, I've tried to be Captain Positive about DL and the changes on the horizon, but today's e-mail implements new fees that to me seem unjustified (and really, a poor business decision to announce them at this stage). No close-in fees has always been a positive difference between the NW and AA programs (to which most of my colleagues belong).

If I didn't have 18 months left on my WC membership, this just might be enough to push me to WN now. Still, once WN gets LGA slots...the shift may begin for me.

Only the 2nd day of 2009...looks like it could be a L-O-N-G year for us.

GUWonder

This is the best time for NW to announce changes -- it gives NW customers a perfect chance to adjust their travel purchase decisions and pursue status matches and elite qualification/re-qualifiication on other airlines.

You have basically a whole year almost to pursue business with the airline of your choice that will reward you for your business.

GTITAN

GUWonder, you are fired up today eh? Think someone needs to stroll down Palermo on an sunny day in a certain gem of a city in deep S.A. The way I see it is that DL has made a bet which is that the FFP is not a "loyalty fly the airline program" but rather an affinity program with the lure of upgrades for some. It does not seem too different from the approach that the European FFPs or the Asian FFPs take. Mind you, I am not jumping on the defend DL bandwagon here, but it will be interesting to see if this gambit works. I know what the collective answer here is anyway.

Safe Travels.

avidflyer

As a guy who's job it is to improve bottom lines I can think of 1000 ways to do it without creating animosity for your customers. Does anyone actually believe that the corporate structure at these dinosaurs is efficient? I will not even get into the labor implications but as soon as an airline learns to run a business without 100 layers of management they will win this inning. The race to the bottom is nothing but a lazy industry unwilling to change ITSELF. To believe that this is the only way to be profitable is very naive. There are $$$billions$$$ of dollars in salaries out there (and I do not mean the folks on the ground) that can and should be eliminated. There are ENORMOUS marketing opportunities in these tin cans that are not being exploited; hell a jet is a flying billboard on every approach . This is just plain laziness defaulting to charging more...someone will get it right at some point.

humanoid94

Ironically these changes cost DL/NW nearly $1,000 today. I just booked a perksaver domestic for a friend which cost DL/NW 500 bucks they would have received. I figure the miles aren't worth anything now, so I gave him an early wedding present. Then this morning, I was planning on refunding an award ticket to Hawaii and buying a revenue ticket as I need the EQMs. Again, I decided not to spend the 500 bucks and will instead settle for silver or even less next year. The golden goose is dead for me, there really is no point to make any decisions about any of the domestic programs based soley on mileage.