Very bad news.

The day that Delta does this will be the last day any employee non-revs in Business Elite.

The thing is, would the aggregate revenue from auctioning off first class seats be greater than the aggregate revenue from encouraging people and their employers to buy tickets on DAL all of the time and if necessary pay for refundable tickets to help build Skymiles?

I'd bet the current system and building loyalty with the HVC outweighs an auctioning system.

Business Elite? Really? I think the concern going forward should be getting any seat, especially with capacity being so tightly controlled. People are hired to make sure every seat possible is filled and with the highest amount of revenue. Doesn't help when people non-rev with families of 5 and 6.

Remember when Leo the CEO decided it would be cool to get rid of travel agents, and sell tickets on Priceline? So cool he even bought a bunch of Priceline stock and made a killing! BUT...the long term result was, our ticket prices and advance bookings plummeted, as people would wait to buy a ticket until midnight the day before the flight, when Delta would dump them onto Priceline.

I sat next to a guy from MCO to BOS who was bragging to me about how he bought his round trip ticket for $25 on Priceline!

Brilliant strategy Leo!

But here it comes again.

Why would anyone pay $3000 for Business Class seat, when they can buy a $300 coach seat and bid for an open B/C seat later?

There goes the neighborhood. White Trash in B/C coming at you. Oh and profits will plummet as well, nobody will pay full price for a B/C seat if they can bid for one at less than half of that.

Well they have to find some way to go bankrupt again in 5 years so they can't cut pilot pay again right?

Hopefully Richard is smarter than Leo, and he won't allow it.

BTW, is Delta still selling tickets on Priceline? I haven't heard much about that lately. Why do you think SWA only sells their product on their own web site?

fixed it for you.

Not to go too far off topic, but what's a good weather app for an Android? I had the Weather Channel's app and it was great, until last night! They "Updated" it, and now it's useless! I used to have 10 cities I could scroll through in about 10 seconds, now they limit it to only 3, and of course they've added lots of ads, and fancy maps and other useless crap.

But if you want to see what the weather is doing in more than 3 spots for your upcoming trips, you'll be on that new p. o. s. for 10 minutes now!

Why do they have to take something good, and "Fix IT"??

These tech nerds really pizz me off!

On the iphone, I use weather bug. It is free and is a way better app than the weather channel.

Google News forwarded me this article yesterday and I thought it was a good analysis of Delta's strengths and weaknesses with growth into China. They didn't come right out and say it, but it eludes to our long haul market being stymied by the lack of an aircraft with the ability to serve the longer thin legs that would work for China's large secondary cities. Don't worry, our code share/jv partners will get those type of aircraft before us and they can just do all the flying.

http://http://centreforaviation.com/analysis/delta-air-lines-improves-china-position-with-better-slots-from-partners-china-eastern--southern-106837