Delta Has Effectively Eliminated Business Class Upgrades, Charges Up To One Million Miles

Delta once promoted themselves as the best airline for upgrades. Not only did they offer ‘unlimited domestic upgrades’ for elites before United or American but they even hyped upgrades to private jets but that program turned out not to be real.

mileage improvements were largely eliminated by Delta. Instead of costing, say, 25,000 miles each way, they now cost the difference between coach and business class, paid in miles with pennies on the dollar.

American and United elites can still upgrade from coach to business class on international flights, even though Delta's top tier elites can't.

Business class is something you have to pay full price for and miles are just a currency. Financing is available if you prefer to use cash.

If you want to upgrade to business class at Delta, you can do it almost any time there is one. An upgrade on Delta can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. There is one way to get from Atlanta to South Africa.

This shouldn't be a surprise. Delta will charge 180,000 miles for a one-way saver award to Europe when partner Virgin Atlantic will charge 50,000 miles.

People still join the program, use their co-brand credit cards, and redeem their miles, according to the Vice President of the SkyMiles program.

He suggests that they are not necessarily trying to play the game with customers in delivering more value than their competitors.

If you are a top tier elite, you have to buy premium economy if you want to upgrade to business class, which will cost you hundreds of thousands of miles. It's difficult to understand how that encourages customers to spend money on a Delta credit card when they'd be better off at 2% cash back since they'd get twice the return on their spending

Changes to the elite program will be implemented next year. The date on which American will award miles based on the cost of a ticket has been set. Minimum spend is needed for elite status.

In general.

When American Airlines and US Airways will combine their programs into one, what will it look like? Based on the announcement that American made and the clarifications I received yesterday, I'm going to outline the program below.

In general.

At today's investor day, Delta made a number of revealing comments. The end of elite upgrades can be seen in their plans for the future. 80% of first class seats will be paid for in some way, and customers will pay as well.

In general.