eponymous_coward

First picture is the cost of the award, second is the cost of the upgrade from PS.

LOL, SkyPesos are trash for longhaul, indeed!

dw

That's definitely on the extreme end, but I have frequently seen cases where the cash price to upgrade a cabin is actually greater than the fare difference from what I bought (and what is currently available), so it would be cheaper for me to just cancel and use the ecredit to rebook directly into the higher cabin.

xliioper

It's no different for revenue fares, where online seat upgrades can be more or less than the cost of fare diff. The mileage amounts for online seat upgrades are always just based on cash amount at 1 CPM in value (as can be seen above). Domestic online seat upgrades subtract out US domestic 7.5% excise tax before converting from cash to miles (so mileage upgrades are worth slightly more than 1 CPM domestically).

ATOBTTR

Sometimes the buy-up per segment advertised in “My Trips” is better. Sometimes it’s better to just rebuy or change the ticket to upfare. It pays to check both options if considering buying up.

xliioper

Also, cheapest award levels to EU require a roundtrip booking for most markets. You don't need to book the same cabin in both directions to qualify for cheaper roundtrip award levels. There are also significant differences between different markets with award levels generally correlating to fare prices. There are currently $2900 roundtrip D1 fares on BOS-AMS in the Fall and you can see there is also cheaper D1 award pricing on this route.

eponymous_coward

That is the buy up per segment advertised in "My Trips"...

Yeah, I'm not buying up at either 318k or 379k SkyPesos. Perhaps given that it's a late October flight and traffic for LHR-SEA dies off in the fall something better will come up, but I am not counting on it.

Perhaps in your example but SEA-LHR is running just shy of 8k round trip in D1 on my dates (so no significant discount for going round trip vs. one way). Same for PS @ $1590 r/t or a little under $800 o/w.

I decided to take the o/w at a shade under $800 because of the AMEX 4k MR on $400 in Delta gift cards offer, plus I could cancel a SEA-EWR-LHR booking on UA using Aeroplan that had me in Y to EWR. The timing on the DL flight is actually a little better (my circadian rhythm app says I should stay awake or maybe just nap an hour or two for most of the DL flight, so PE is probably OK for that).

(I already have VS booked during a sale + Bilt transfer bonus on the way home.)

I just find it funny that in effect you are penalized for giving Delta your money. But that's how "the most premium airline in North America" works I guess.

xliioper

There is a lot of nuance here. Like the fact that revenue fares are O&D based, while the hop-by-hop online seat upgrade offers are not (they also don't factor in original purchase price and just seem to mostly look at bucket inventory open on flight with fixed price points). Yes, they could have made the online seat upgrade pricing much more sophisticated. But the counter argument if it was always predictably cheaper than paying fare difference and upfaring, they could potentially canabalize D1 revenue fare sales.

Also, in addition to having a roundtrip booking requirement for cheaper revenue fares and awards, there are also minimum stay and day of travel requirements (so just booking a roundtrip won't necessarily qualify you for the cheaper roundtrip fares and awards). Also, there are significantly cheaper roundtrip ex-US D1 fares around major US holidays like Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas,etc. (due to limited demand for ex-US business travel) on certain routes with roundtrip D1 fares on SEA-LHR going for $3490 and awards from 272K RT. Since award pricing is O&D based just like revenue fares, awards on SEA-LHR can be significantly cheaper than awards on other routes like SEA-AMS (even when connecting through AMS to get to LHR).

jetsfan92588

I don't get it, how are you penalized? If you have an award ticket the ticket is always refundable. If you want to upgrade you can always use the value of your current ticket against a new ticket. The fact that the buy up offer is bad doesn't mean you are penalized in any way. The only way for someone to get that buy up offer is to have a ticket already. You're right that it generally doesn't make sense to buy the seat upgrade if a cancel and purchase is cheaper.

There's no penalties, and the value of your ticket is not negative.

eponymous_coward

Exactly. Instead of an offer to make the upgrade from an already purchased fare that at least goes "well, hey, dude already gave us some money so we should account for that when we offer an upgrade price", I am penalized to make an upgrade (charged more to make an upgrade than if I just booked a D1 ticket), compared to a cancel and rebook (cash price OR miles price).

Yes, in the world of FT where we know all the ins and outs and tricks and nuances "duh, just cancel and rebook if Delta's being dumb about pricing your upgrade" is obvious, but how obvious is it to people who don't live in our bubble?

I'm sure there's some amazing "revenue management is smarter than you are to price an upgrade from PS to D! more than the actual D1 ticket if you just bought a ticket" reason for this (I mean, it IS SkyPesos, you have to be dumb as a post to throw almost 400k miles at something you can get cheaper elsewhere, maybe Delta just wants rubes off the turnip truck).

jetsfan92588

As noted, sometimes it's cheaper, sometimes it's not. As for uninformed consumers having to pay more if they don't know to check both options - yes, that's true. Welcome to the world. Delta isn't systematically penalizing people who purchase and buy up, otherwise the upgrade offers would always cost more than the cancel and repurchase. The numbers appear to come from different formulas. But people who know an industry being able to finagle different pricing is neither something that's remotely new nor is it limited to Delta or travel generally.

ATOBTTR

You aren’t “penalized” - it’s often different fares and different inventories. No different than any other vendor that may offer the same end product for multiple different price points. Do you think it’s unreasonable that some people pay more for a seat on the same flight than someone else?

Again, it’s different price points and different metrics. This isn’t all that different from airlines repricing fares as supply and demand changes. You may book early and get a better deal than someone who books close in and pays a lot more. You may also book early and the airline drops fares to stimulate demand and someone who books later than you pays less. Is all of this “penalizing”?

eponymous_coward

Let's put it this way: I think it's dumb that Delta is pricing an upgrade for my existing PS fare not as ($X minus existing fare) but ($X + $Y). It leaves a sour taste in my mouth as a customer. I've actually done paid upgrades on Delta domestic flights so it's not IMPOSSIBLE that I might do it on this one.

But yes, there probably is some galaxy-brained reason why "hey you should cancel the existing ticket and rebook if you want to sit in D1, because upgrading this PS ticket is for schmucks, jump through THESE hoops instead of using that shiny upgrade button" is the right thing to do for revenue management that my tiny brain can't understand.

This is all happening at the same time so "hey, someone buying a ticket at a different time might get a different price so how about THAT smart guy?" feels like a different comparison?

But hey, I will accept that my tiny brain clearly doesn't understand the logic of "you should charge more to upgrade from D1 than it costs to cancel and use the existing ticket to rebook D1" because I am not a revenue management knower. I'm just curious about how Delta was pricing upgrades. It's fine that they're pricing them as "sod off, peasant, all the REAL pros aren't idiots and cancel and rebook". It's their plane, they can price D1 upgrades for $10,000,000 over the cost of a new D1 ticket if that's what they feel like doing.

jetsfan92588

It's not always more expensive to just click upgrade. Sometimes it's less expensive and many here have gotten a great deal waiting for those upgrade prices to be much cheaper than the fare difference. And in that process, some, even the peasants, have also benefited from that cheaper price to upgrade, even if they didn't know about the other option.

By the way, there are other consequences of these choices than just the price. And the only way you would know that is if you spent hours reading through fine print and linking to other terms throughout the Delta website. If someone wants to benefit from the time people have put in to understand all the intricacies, they need to pay someone like a travel agent to assist them. Or ask the collective wisdom of FT for even better information. This is no different than any other purchase.

DiverDave

It is quite obvious by now that Delta is playing with the mouse seeking the cheese in the maze, as far as these upgrade offers go.....

David

eponymous_coward

I gathered, but I suspect that SEA-LHR in the middle of October isn't hot season as far as demand to both places goes. Given that AA just "noped" out of the market and DL just "peaced out" on LAX-LHR.

I'm fine waiting and seeing what turns up, sour taste at the initial upgrade pricing and all, Heck, I'm fine flying PS! If I wasn't I wouldn't have bought it!

I'll have a direct comparison with VS Y+ on the route, which I took last year going LHR-SEA. The fact that it's actually decently priced for a nonstop AND one way in Y+ at less than $800 seems pretty good. Not some amazeballs $2K EU-USA J fare but that usually means "position to EU + deal with some stops".

It's normal to need a travel agent to need to figure out the best way to apply or get a mileage upgrade on a PS fare?

(I get that we're talking SkyPesos here.)

Sure. Fine.

Yeah, I get the industry (and DL's search for revenue) is a "Who moved my cheese?" experience sometimes.