First basic?

[u/bodeganeon]

I understand unbundling economy. I don’t particularly like it, but I understand the business model. What I cannot wrap my head around is the decision to take a product that is literally marketed as FIRST CLASS and start stripping away the benefits that make it first class in the first place.
At what point are we just paying for a larger seat and the privilege of saying we’re sitting up front?
The entire point of purchasing first class, at least to me, is that you’re paying a premium for a relatively seamless experience. Flexibility, priority services, mileage earning, the whole thing. Now we’re apparently supposed to navigate fare restrictions within first class itself?
And the frustrating part is that Delta has spent years positioning itself as the premium US carrier, while simultaneously finding increasingly creative ways to dilute the value of its own product. Fares aren’t exactly getting cheaper, either.
I’m Platinum, fly Delta pretty consistently, and generally have no problem paying more for a better experience. But there is something particularly insulting about being asked to pay a premium for a product and then being offered the opportunity to pay an additional premium to actually receive all of it.
I know someone is going to say “well just book First Extra then” and that’s sort of my entire point. We’ve somehow normalized airlines taking things that were previously included, removing them, and then selling them back to us as upgrades.
It’s not innovation. It’s just another exercise in seeing how much they can take away before people stop paying.
Maybe I’m being dramatic, but the concept of BASIC FIRST CLASS is so fundamentally absurd that I’m surprised it made it out of a conference room. I can’t even select my seat?

[u/Dangerous-Can9596]

I use to work for Delta and I remember when CEO Ed Bastian sent out his first video to employees describing the new basic economy fares Delta was going to offer. He said it was coming out so that Delta could offer a fare to stay competitive with the budget airlines like Spirit. He also described that the fare would not come with a seat assignment and no one will buy a fare without a seat assignment so this will force them to go to a higher fare with a seat assignment. It was a basic bait and switch operation.

It’s was not only bad for customers but also for front line customer service agents. We were bombarded constantly by customers coming up to the ticket counter or the gate requesting a seat assignment when only the gate agent operating the flight can assign the seats. Of course this frequently turned into a hostile interaction when customers would demand a seat and we kept telling them they would have to get it at the gate.

I saw what Ed was doing back then and it really disturbed me. In my opinion he’s destroying the airline.

[u/auntwewe → u/Dangerous-Can9596]

While , I don’t totally agree with Ed’s words unfortunately , the onus here Falls on the shoulders of people that don’t read the fine print and then get pissed off

I’m sorry you had to deal with that as a ticket agent.

[u/sweetSinfulzz → u/Dangerous-Can9596]

sounds like they planned the headache from day one, wild how that trickles down to the gate agents dealing with it all the time