Advertiser Disclosure: Eye of the Flyer, a division of Chatterbox Entertainment, Inc., is part of an affiliate sales network and and may earn compensation when a customer clicks on a link, when an application is approved, or when an account is opened. This relationship may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. Some links on this page are affiliate or referral links. We may receive a commission or referral bonus for purchases or successful applications made during shopping sessions or signups initiated from clicking those links. The content on this page is accurate as of the posting date; however, some of the offers mentioned may have expired.
For those of you who have not been following along, Delta intended to have seven A321neo narrow body aircraft with flatbed suites or seats. But the seats are behind schedule so what they do have in stock are standard A321 first class seats and they have chosen to install a massive first class cabin temporarily.
How massive? 44 seats! That is simply an amazing amount of seats compared to any other Delta narrow body jet. Since the jet is not a wide body the rest of the jet will be Comfort+ (coach seat with a tiny bit more space) and then more coach seats. Thus no Premium Economy seats behind the mega first class cabin.
This new, and temporary, seat configuration is set (per Delta) to begin flying in May. I have seen Delta elites very excited about the prospect of upgrades like they have not seen for a number of years now.
I am not so sure.
First up we know that Delta is willing to sell upgrades for almost nothing rather than “give” them to loyal Medallion® flyers and they have become masters at doing this. So while there may be a few more upgrades, I don’t expect this to have a big impact on upgrades to and from the ATL!
With that in mind here is what I think just might happen. Delta may study up on the statistics and see from these jets that overloading domestic flights with a bunch more first class seats has a material impact on profits.
Since we know MAX profits is all that Delta loves we should see, over time, a move to make much bigger first class cabin expansions as the new default configuration. Maybe not to the levels of this temporary experiment but still many more than offered today.
If this were to come to fruition then that, at long last, could just maybe slightly improve the reason to strive once again for top Delta status.
What do you think? Do you agree with my view of what we are going to see happen? – René
Advertiser Disclosure: Eye of the Flyer, a division of Chatterbox Entertainment, Inc., is part of an affiliate sales network and and may earn compensation when a customer clicks on a link, when an application is approved, or when an account is opened. This relationship may impact how and where links appear on this site. This site does not include all financial companies or all available financial offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. Some links on this page are affiliate or referral links. We may receive a commission or referral bonus for purchases or successful applications made during shopping sessions or signups initiated from clicking those links.
My relatives who work for DL will just all take these flights with more FC seats as nonrevs. Every week they sit around and decide where to go not based on destination but based on how many D1 seats are open.
I just spent 5.5 hours in FC on the 321this week very uncomfortable. I hope the new seats are more comfy esp for long flights!!
I sat in one of these seats on an A321 on saturday for 5 and 1/2 hours not very comfortable.
Hopefully this will make the ability to book 1st with Regional upgrades more available
. Who knows
I love your positive attitude, Jerry!