Delta has expanded its “Basic” offering to premium cabin bookings (including Delta First, Delta Premium Select, and Delta One), launching a new Delta Basic Business Class offering.
When booking the basic business class experience, your seats will be assigned after check-in. You’ll have less checked baggage allowance. You’ll earn fewer miles on your flight, and you won’t have access to things like Delta One Check-In or Delta One Lounges. Unfortunately, this applies to both paid tickets and award tickets booked through Delta if you’re booking the basic fare package.
Quick Thoughts
Delta has long been a pioneer in creating a product that you’re supposed to actively not want to buy in a “Basic” fare. While they trumpet this addition as an opportunity to give customers more choice in terms of which components of the experience to buy, there’s no doubt that this is likely meant to encourage many to buy up to a higher-level business class fare.
That said, if you don’t care about things like the priority check-in and lounge access and you don’t need the checked baggage offering, I suppose this may give you an opportunity to pay less than someone who does value those things. The in-flight experience will remain unchanged, as you’ll still get access to the same catering and in-flight experience, apart from the inability to select your seat before check-in. For those traveling with others, that certainly may be an annoyance, particularly if you’re traveling with children. For others, a lie-flat seat matters more than which lie-flat seat they are assigned.
We haven’t yet seen basic offerings expanded to partner award tickets. In other words, if you manage to find a Delta One flight that is available to get partners at a price that you want to pay, we expect that it would still book into the regular Delta Business Class fare bucket, not a “Basic” fare bucket. However, if you’re booking through Delta, watch out for the fare type you choose and the associated restrictions. Basic isn’t just for economy anymore.
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“Basic” award tickets seem stupid. Let’s reward you for your loyalty with a suckier product. It would be like Dominos rewarding you with a free pizza that was cheaper if you took 50% less cheese.
As an economy booking, relatively frequent international flier, this is a move I’d normally be cheering. But the truth is, I simply don’t trust airlines to not use anything and everything to raise prices. If this is actually cheaper than current Business Class fares, especially if this were expanded to points, it would definitely encourage me to book business. The biggest thing I want from it is the lie-flat seat since I really cannot sleep on planes otherwise. I don’t need the perks at all and the regular Delta lounges are fine. So in some ways I’m the perfect target for this. However, I just don’t trust that this won’t end up being the standard price, and they’ll just use it as an excuse to increase the prices on non-basic business. They’ll have to prove me wrong on that before I feel positive about this change.
They’ll all be doing this soon, and it’s disgusting. Paying more for the same thing, or worse, paying more for less. Combined with the deceptive use of technology to surveillance-price you to pay more than you otherwise would, the lack of consumer protections in the US, and the loss of LCCs like Spirit, we’re in for a rough road ahead. Buckle up, Buckaroos!
I could see myself taking advantage of something like this if the cash savings was significant, but the example that Delta shows is only $200 cheaper, less than 10% the price of Delta One Classic.
Exactly. Bad value, especially if you want DeltaOne lounge access or to earn better rates towards status (but, let’s be honest, being a Medallion ain’t what it used to be). Interestingly, I think this’ll hurt more premium leisure passengers who decide they’ll forgo those benefits to save a little, because mostly they just want the lie-flat for a long-haul flight. However, for OPM/corporate travelers, this should be fine, unless your company is stingy, because many of those plans go for Classic anyway, and Business if it’s 6+ hours. Delta is realizing they can start making more money off those folks. That’s the play, here.
Any idea how reduced the miles are? Any impact on MQDs?
You’re so right to be skeptical. Delta isn’t ZipAir. They’re not selling a bare-bones lie-flat for half-price. No, with this, they’re pretending to lower prices by giving more ‘choice’ to customers, while in reality it’s ‘pay the same and get less,’ or ‘pay more for the same as before.’