Several Delta Air Lines customers — including yours truly — noticed a rather unpleasant surprise on Saturday morning.
Aloha!
My wife and I booked tickets several weeks ago for Delta’s inaugural Boston (BOS) to Honolulu (HNL) flight in November. We planned to meet up with some friends from Detroit and New York and enjoy the journey together.
I flew Avelo Airlines’ first revenue flight and the launch of Delta’s A321neo. I also attended a special event for Delta’s reintroduction of its Los Angeles (LAX) to Paris (CDG) service. Inaugurals (or relaunches) or special. Mrs. Carley has never experienced one — and I thought this would be something fun, especially with several of our AvGeek friends!
We initially were on the fence about taking the long flight from Beantown to the Aloha State — especially because we’d fly in from LAX the day before.
We didn’t want to spend a gazillion points on lie-flat seats for the BOS to HNL hop. Spending 12 hours in coach on a domestic inaugural where we’d basically stay overnight and head home the next day wasn’t very appealing. (Our friends feel the same way.)
But the retrofitted 767-300ER featured Delta One seats (marketed as First Class), Premium Select seats (marketed as Comfort+), and Main Cabin. (The usual Comfort+ seats would be given to “lucky” Main Cabin passengers.)
Because Mrs. Carley and I are Platinum Medallions, we could purchase Main Cabin seats and upgrade to Comfort+ shortly after booking. The Comfort+ section was actually the premium economy seats that we really like. It’s like domestic First Class. Getting the chance to sit in the premium economy seats—while understanding we wouldn’t receive Premium Select service—was a big sell for us.
Deal!
So, we bought our Main Cabin seats and upgraded to Comfort+.
How about that? Comfort+ seats that actually offer a noticeable upgrade in comfort!
But Then…
Most Delta schedule changes (departure and arrival times, flight numbers, aircraft swaps, etc.) affect people’s accounts on Saturdays. I usually check my Delta itineraries a few times during the weekend to see if there’s anything I need to amend.
And that’s when I noticed this:
We were suddenly in Premium Select — but “Pending Purchase.”
The flight is now marketed as having four classes of service:
- Delta One
- Premium Select
- Comfort+
- Main Cabin
Frankly, I’m surprised Delta didn’t offer four classes when the route went on sale several weeks ago.
Sure enough, we were reassigned seats a few hours later.
There was no aircraft swap involved. It’s the same model, just Delta playing CYA when it comes to selling premium tickets when they probably realized they weren’t doing it in the first place.
To be clear: Delta still honored our class upgrade from Main Cabin to Comfort+. Our disappointment lies in the fact that we went from great seats to, well, not.
But here’s what really gets my blood boiling. What if people bought Comfort+ using miles or cash and expect those larger, cushier seats? (As opposed to people like us who bought Main Cabin and were upgraded.) They’re now in a glorified coach. Those are the travelers I really feel bad for.
Look, I don’t consider this a bait-and-switch on Delta’s part. This is perfectly within their right.
That said, it’s not a good look for them to suddenly pull something like this.
Upgrade Certificates to the Rescue — Right?
Neither Mrs. Carley nor I selected our 2024 Choice Benefits yet. We figured one of us would redeem a choice for Regional Upgrade Certificates (RUC). After all, Premium Select was now wide open. There’d certainly be available RUC inventory, right?
Of course not.
I’d happily use upgrade certificates to get into Premium Select. But stunts like this further solidify they’re rarely valuable.
But, hey, at least we customers are “the best part of Delta.” (How do they treat the people are who the “worst” part of Delta?)
“Delta should be ashamed of itself,” one of the people in my group said. “Several of us who are Delta Diamonds and Platinums wanted to get together to celebrate the inaugural Boston to Honolulu flight, so we bought tickets in good faith based on the upgraded seats offered to us. Then, they pulled the rug out from under us, changing it to a four-class service and downgraded us to traditional Comfort+.
“It just feels sleazy,” they continued. “When Delta thought they could make more for the seats, they kicked us to the curb without a second thought. So much for loyalty to Delta.”
Final Approach
The idea of sitting in actual premium economy seats for a special inaugural flight was the big draw for not only my wife and me but also our Medallion friends.
After conferring with some of those people today, Delta will have several canceled reservations, not just for that flight but also for the positioning trips to Boston and home from Honolulu.
Following the roller coaster of Delta’s disastrous SkyMiles 2025 rollout — and the airline pretty much telegraphing where the program is heading — little things like these only discourage us from giving them more business.
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It’s one thing to swap equipment I get it but to use the same equipment and retroactively change the cabins…that’s sleazy. Figures Delta.
Yeah, it really put a bad taste in our mouths.
DL did the exact same thing to DTW-HNL when it launched. There is precedence for this sleaziness.
Interesting — I didn’t know that.
File a DOT complaint as well
I don’t know what good that would do. I was upgraded to Comfort+ and I was still in Comfort+ after the change. The only thing that might happen is Secretary Pete telling Ed Bastian and Mr. Ham Sandwich to start being good boys and be nice to the customers.
Delta has been very clear this past year all they care about is the endless dollar for increased profit sharing.
Ehhh, don’t think there is much to complain about. Booked Comfort+, you are in Comfort+. Same end result if you booked First Class served by an A350 and that swaps to a B739. Still FC, but you expected a nicer seat.
Same situation here, IMO.
“Ehhh, don’t think there is much to complain about. Booked Comfort+, you are in Comfort+. Same end result if you booked First Class served by an A350 and that swaps to a B739.”
I respectfully disagree (and thanks for the comment). It’s kind of not the same end result. There was no aircraft swap involved. I acknowledge in the post that I booked Main Cabin, received a complimentary upgrade to C+, and my reassigned seat was in C+. This is Delta exercising poor customer service.
Nope. He bought the ticket expecting one seat based on the information available to him at the purchase, and then Delta retroactively changed its policy and downgraded him to a worse seats. It’s plain and simple as that.
It’s like buying a lie flat Delta One and got downgraded to regular first class/premium select. Classic bait and switch.
ITA, you got what you paid for…wait you still received MORE than you paid for and your Platinum Elite benefits. You saw a loophole and hoped it wouldn’t closed and when it did, are now complaining. I seriously thought this was a Rene post at first. SMH…
“I seriously thought this was a Rene post at first.”
I take that as a compliment — thank you! I hope your day gets better.
To be fair…it does sound like a Rene post and that’s not a compliment.
I take it as a compliment!
Have you spent your $28k yet? Ed doesn’t care. I moved to OW and *A this year. Its really not that bad.
Ok, so you tried to game the system and get a premium select seat for a main cabin fare. I’m sure you know the cost of a premium select seat on a twelve hour flight. Sorry, but you got exactly what you paid for…actually more than you paid for. You got a comfort + seat for a main cabin price.
So, I tried to game the system by playing by Delta’s rules?
Everyone seems to love delta but the fact is … they are trash.
I’m surprised bleeding liberal die hards don’t jump on you for killing the environment so you cant say “First!” As a capitalist I say thank you for your service 😉
To be honest, this should have been expected. No one in their right mind would think that Delta wasn’t going to market the Delta One seats as such on their longest domestic flight when all of their other flights to Hawaii from places other than the West Coast are marketed as such (even SLC now.)
My assumption all along was that this was either just a matter of Delta taking a while to get the new route added to their list of premium domestic routes in their systems or them testing the waters for demand on the new route without selling the tickets as Delta One/PS in case demand didn’t turn out as they hoped so that they could re-route people through the West Coast on non-D1 flights.
And, yes, RUC availability for the long-haul Hawaii flights is limited. That shouldn’t exactly be shocking either. A GUC would clear to PS on a seat-available basis, but RUCs don’t.
If you don’t want to do the flight in C+, you can always cancel and either get the miles back or get a flight credit. I’m sure Delta will have no trouble selling seats on an inaugural.
I play that game all the time going transcontinental. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it don’t. I do like me some “free” D1 seats when it works out, however. Try again…
Yup. I just checked on flights i booked for my wife and myself with money that was going to expire in my delta acct (booked last dec). BAM!
Changed morning flights to late night. Changed seats to middle seat from aisle. I am soooo glad i flew extra flights last dec to reach 2MM. This will be a long dreadful phone call.
Delta hates you as much as all the other airlines hate all you guys that slam the airlines! You got more than you deserved!
OK, I’ll play along. What do you think I deserved?
Don’t listen to the haters. I would have been annoyed as well. I flew ATL-JFK on a 763 with PS seats the exact same way as they don’t market PS on that route. We also flew ATL-HNL and HNL-SLC last year using RUCs to move to D1 before they started marketing PS on those routes, which would have only allowed us to move to PS. If you knew in advance they were marketing PS, you wouldn’t have booked it.
Thank you!
If you want a big seat, buy the class you want. Entitlements are only for the lucky ones or the ones who have put in the work. I have no complaints but then, am happier when flying economy with an empty seat next to me than when I fly economy+ full cabin.
That’s not how it works. Delta encourages people to seek “free” upgrades with its statuses. It’s debatable whether they are free anyway, since it requires a lot of spending with Delta (either by flying or by spending with branded cards) to get the status. In many cases you can “pay” with upgrade coupons.
While, by the letter of the law Delta may be within their rights to do this, from a PR perspective this was not the right thing to do.