Beginning in October, flying on Delta Airlines is going to be a little different. And if you’re booking fall or winter travel on the airline in question now, you might well be seeing those changes already; they went into effect on May 15. And if the conversations some Delta enthusiasts are having online are any indication, at least some frequent flyers are not happy with the airline’s announcement — or what it means for the future of air travel.
Delta’s update looks like a combination of rebranding their existing seating categories and making some premium options more prominent. Their announcement begins by revealing that the airline’s “seat products will now be classified into the following categories: Delta Main (formerly Main Cabin), Delta Comfort (formerly Delta Comfort+®), Delta First (Formerly First Class), Delta Premium Select, and Delta One.” So far, so good.
It gets more complicated from there, though. Delta also shared that it will no longer offer “Basic Economy” seating — at least, not under that name: “[T]hat base-level fare class has been folded into Delta Main, which now includes three experience options allowing you to better tailor your journey: Basic, Classic and Extra.” These will be available for flights departing the U.S. and Canada; the different tiers relate to things like being able to choose your seat, how Delta will respond to cancellation requests and how much mileage a traveler will earn.
It’s a lot to take in. And that’s before you get into the challenges facing travelers who booked fall travel earlier in the year and might have a somewhat different flight experience than they’d planned for. Delta has another page answering potential questions, but some of the wording there is confusing in its own right. Notably, in answer to a question about whether travelers can “modify” an experience or product after booking, Delta revealed that “[e]xperiences are not able to be modified post purchase” — but products are.
And if your reaction upon reading that something like, “Wait, I thought I was booking a ticket, not a product or an experience” — well, if the reactions on the r/delta subreddit are any indication, including one titled “Are they trying to make it as complicated as possible?,” you are not alone.
If I’m reading this correctly, Delta’s new tiers would allow someone traveling in Delta Main to upgrade to Delta Comfort — but not to upgrade from Delta Main Basic to Delta Main Extra. (In theory, they could choose the latter option, but they’d have to cancel their original ticket and rebook it.)
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Cutting in line can backfire spectacularlyAnd if you’ve successfully processed all of that, there’s one more wrinkle: experiences are also subject to where a flight is departing from. “Our new ‘Extra’ experience will be limited to itineraries originating in the U.S. and Canada, as well as select international markets,” Delta stated. ‘If ‘Extra’ is not available in a given market, customers will see the legacy ‘Refundable’ product in its place.”
Reactions on Reddit have not been terribly complimentary. “Did Delta just get more expensive? It sure got more confusing!” user SameDistrict1062 wrote in one post. User Swissjuan, meanwhile, statred, “I’m so annoyed with these gimmicks to charge you more for basic features.” If there’s enough of a backlash, perhaps we’ll see Delta reverse course here — though presumably, that would lead to a perfect storm of utter confusion.
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