Delta changed nonstop flight

[tkldisney]

Any time I've called DL about flight changes over two hours, they have always put me on flight I wanted without any additional charge. They just recently did this, and they automatically put me on early am n/s flight, I didn't want that so I asked to be put on the later n/s which was much higher in price. They did without hesitation.

 

[bicker]

And generally they will, without being required to do so.

Are you willing to guarantee that they'll do so for every single member of the DIS? Who's your underwriter?

 

[CarolA]

We obviously don't see eye to eye on this, Carol.

I think we are saying the same thing. Delta is doing what it has to do to get the airline profitable. That means fewer flights at a HIGHER cost to us.... it's that simple.

In any business you have limited options to make more money. One is to cut costs (i.e., fewer planes in the sky) and the other is to raise prices.

There is a third option which DL and others have tried. Increase demand for the flights. However, the way they did that was by selling those seats for less then cost. Hopefully someone in the airline has woken up to the flaw with thier model. It's not like they can "add volume" at a higher cost. Americans vote with their pocket books and as long as there are too few passengers chasing too many seats airlines think they have "sell low" to fill that thing up. Now if you bring the supply and demand model to a profit point SOME passengers are going to get priced out but those were probably the one's you couldn't afford in the first place. (Sorry, but the "loss" of the $59 each way passenger is not painful LOL!) So you should eventually hit a point where your "supply" of seats will be supported at a profitable level by customers. That probably means we don't need as many flights to MCO since DL seems willing to "lose" the bottom tier.

I agree with you that SW has done the same thing. Their last round of flight changes was net LOSS to MCO.

The market to MCO is very saturated. And it's a very price sensitive market. Airlines may decide that it's not a profitable market for them to play in. Now will that help the "bottom tier" like Allegiant? I don't know. While they say they are "low cost" fuel is still high. I don't know if the savings on employee costs and landing fees (Sanford is cheaper then MCO) are enough to offset the costs of fuel.

 

[MrMarv]

Everyone wants a piece of the Orlando market, as long as they don't demolish their balance sheets in the pocess.

 

[Brian Noble]

That's a mighty tall "as long as" in the current environment though.

Does anyone happen to know the business/leisure breakdown into MCO? At first I assumed it was nearly all leisure, but there may be enough convention business to get some good fares out of that market.

 

[CarolA]

That's a mighty tall "as long as" in the current environment though.

Does anyone happen to know the business/leisure breakdown into MCO? At first I assumed it was nearly all leisure, but there may be enough convention business to get some good fares out of that market.

Well it probably has significant swings. Holiday periods and lots of the summer would be more tourist.

The other thing is that a lot of folks doing a convention will 'tag along' the family and kids for the parks. So you might have one business traveler and three lesiure on the same trip. If lesiure fares go up, so you still take the family? What's the "tipping" point on that decison?

 

[Brian Noble]

Don't know. I suspect it might be significantly higher than straight leisure, because at lesat one fare and the room are probably comped to the family.

 

[CarolA]

Don't know. I suspect it might be significantly higher than straight leisure, because at lesat one fare and the room are probably comped to the family.

Probably true, depending on the company.

I have a "training" in Orlando next week. For "internal meetings" like this my company lets managers and above have thier own room. Staff share. So in that case if the staff guy decides to bring his family he has to pay half the hotel room also. Now I doubt that's common....

I know that when I went to a big convention a few years ago at the Gaylord Palms I was actually kind of surprised how few people seemed to take advantage of the idea of bringing your family. We seemed to get more spouses joining us the year we were in Vegas. Guess the idea of a "grown up getaway" was more appealing?

 

[Brian Noble]

Perhaps. It's all a bit foreign to me, because my business trips are so packed full of, well, business, that it wouldn't be any fun for me at all. My wife has come along with me precisely once on a business trip to sightsee on her own while I was occupied, but that was to Switzerland, so it was something of a special case. We did stick around an extra day to enjoy Lausanne together---the Olympic museum was wondeful. She has declined coming with me to France twice (Paris and Bordeaux), the UK, and Sweden.

Edited to add: she missed out on a great trip to the German alps, too.