Delta Air Lines began offering Basic Economy awards at lower prices. While Basic Economy can be a problem for some travelers, I welcome the move.
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Now Issuing Basic Economy Awards
Award travel in the US has changed drastically over the last five years. As ten airlines became ten airlines became five the industry has become more dynamic in their award pricing. Sometimes this is bad for consumers, like when a domestic ticket within the US is no longer 25,000 miles no matter where you start and end your journey and has increased to 32,000, 40,000, and even 50,000 points in coach. However, dynamic pricing also allows airlines to dip below their standard award charts to fill seats on empty planes.
This week Delta Air Lines began issuing restrictive Basic Economy awards at lower prices.
What Does A Basic Economy Award Ticket Mean?
Basic Economy comes with greater restrictions. For paid tickets, this means boarding last, no upgrades or mile accruals, no status miles for flights and no ability to pay for a checked bag. At draconian United Airlines, it also means that you will not be able to bring a rollaboard and a personal item on the plane (Delta and American both allow these two articles). Basic Economy tickets do not come with seat selection options and passengers cannot change their ticket.
But on award tickets, few of these restrictions matter. Passengers are unable to earn status or miles from award flights anyway, the baggage rules are the same. Basic Economy award tickets cannot be changed so there is some loss of flexibility from a traditional award, but Medallion members will still board in a priority lane. Medallion elites are still eligible for a free checked bag (and presumably those with the Delta credit card).
Remember: Due to US regulations, children have to be assigned a seat next to at least one parent regardless of the fare they purchase. In practice, most families with more than one child or parent are seated together, likely out of convenience.
How Much Cheaper Is a Basic Economy Award?
A little. There have been a few write-ups about the service of note, Points, Miles and Martini’s found a few examples with a savings of 1,000-2,500 miles in each direction. That’s not dramatic savings (15-20% in the examples listed) but Medallion members aren’t really losing much.
Flexibility is the biggest issue for me with these fares. I probably wouldn’t trade 1,000 miles for the difference between a potential upgrade to Comfort Plus and the ability to cancel and refund the points to my account if I was a Delta elite. However, when comparing the Minneapolis-Phoenix route, I might. The difference of 5,000 miles total is enough for a short Basic Economy award one-way and that adds real value to me in exchange for very little.
Why Are Basic Economy Awards Great?
I highlighted in another post the absolute highway robbery United charges for one-way and roundtrips between certain short-distance markets like Newark-Pittsburgh. When British Airways offered 4,500-mile one-way awards for flights less than 650 miles in distance, my family and I flew to Washington DC, New York City, and Chicago more often. While the increase to 7,500 minimum still seems like a deal when compared to United’s price, the increase meant that a family weekend in the Big Apple went from 27,000 Avios to 45,000.
The difference between two quick weekend trips per year and three is substantial to us. Short flights with lots of competition make awards hard to justify and even tougher to stomach high costs.
Sometimes, I also have “orphaned miles” those that I cannot spend and may eventually expire (though Skymiles never do). With Delta right now I have just over 6,000 miles – not enough to fly anywhere on United – which suddenly have value if I am prepared to fly with restrictions.
While my family has millions of miles and points spread across many different currencies, not everyone does. For the casual traveler that may have one mileage credit card or flies a couple of times per year. With Basic Economy Awards, they can turn 12,000 miles into a trip to Florida from Charleston as opposed to not being able to utilize those points until they earn more or purchase miles.
What do you think? Are Basic Economy Awards great or not so great? Do you think there are greater implications across the industry as a result?
Kyle. These awards suck the big one. How is it great? You realize they are the same prices as before with less benefits. Horse shit , they are not great at all.
I think it is all realted to the opportunity, I just bought 685 dollars tickets to Honolulu from Chicago in basic, and one in 60k miles, no long layover only one stop in Seattle for 1:40 hours, so for me it is a good deal despite the restrictions, we just need to pack accordingly. I don’t think I would have been able to find this fares other way, the cheapest I found last year was around 900 so I can see the deal here. Of course this not apply to every route so it depends, but in general I’m happy this option is available.
@Ryan – They are not the same prices, they are cheaper as I outlined. If you are a Medallion there is nearly no loss of benefits other than cancellation policy. I rarely cancel trips so that really doesn’t matter to me. So it’s a way to save without any real effect for my short trip examples like Pittsburgh-NYC as mentioned.
I feel like liveandletsfly tries too hard to be edgy and form an “away from the pack” opinion. In many cases such as this one, there is no merit to the argument and generally makes you guys look like a bit of a shill.
No family should ever book basic economy considering the rules.
Basic economy as a whole just should not exist, as an award or paid ticket.
Now wait a second Parag, you say my argument has no merit, yet you don’t justify your position. I mention why families can’t be split up (US law) so why should no family ever book basic? It’s cheaper and they have to buy more tickets, they are the only ones that can ensure they sit together on these tickets – it seems like families have MORE of a reason to book these than anyone else.
Lastly, I am not contrarian for contrarian’s sake. There are places and times for RyanAir, Spirit and when the majors match the same conditions, basic economy. I’ve flown two passengers Manchester to Milan for a weekend for $40 roundtrip, a day trip to Dublin for $20 roundtrip. I have spoken about flying to Florida for the weekend for $60 per person roundtrip – those prices make travel possible when it otherwise might not be. That makes me a fan of low-cost style fares and while I don’t book them all the time, for short distance flights, especially ones that are usually expensive for regular economy, I am a fan. I don’t like these fares better for every flight, but for some, a regular economy premium doesn’t make any sense to me.
I was not planning on continuing this further, but since you insist.
Before you comment on laws on splitting up families, I would google “delta splits family on basic economy” or “Airline splits family on basic economy”, to see that it happens fairly regularly. Many respectable boards are rife with stories of families being forced to seat 3 rows apart in middle seats. So to quote “the rules are more like guidelines”.
Additionally, can we at least agree that “Basic Economy” is full-service carriers masquerading to compete with Low-Cost Carriers? I have no issue with Spirit, Ryan Air, Frontier or any LCC, I would happily fly them if they have a direct flight or keeping a schedule is not of utmost importance. Rarely has basic economy fare competed with a LCC fare. I assume the main disagreement is accepting Basic Economy as a full-service carriers version of a Low-cost fare, in comparison, it’s neither low cost nor does it provide the pay-to-play options LCC’s provide.
Between LCC’s and Basic Economy, The LCC’s are the lesser of 2 evils, it’s the devil you know vs the devil who does not follow the law.
My opinion is Basic economy’s function is to pretend to compete with LCC’s while over-inflating the value of Economy. Add to that, it being offered as an award, what could possibly be “great” about that?
If you want a flight to Kansas City in the winter yes these awards might represent value. Delta likes these fares because they can get extra revenue from them. For Delta anything is better than empty seats. Overall though this is a huge devaluation for the customer trying to get more than 1c per point value from frequent flyer miles.
I agree that the Midwest is generally over-priced. Originally from Omaha, we used to drive to Kansas City just to flee OMA’s ridiculously high prices. Friends from Sioux City drive to Omaha or Des Moines for the same reasons.
I have 6,000 miles in Delta for example, under regular economy rates they are generally useless to me, but with Basic Economy awards I can use them for a one-way, that’s real value to me.
Where did you get that “quote”? Firstly, it’s not true and secondly, this post is the only result on Google.
Here’s a properly referenced quote to support what I’ve just said (imagine that!).
“Congress passed a law in 2016 called the Families Flying Together Act, which was supposed to ensure children under the age of 13 will be seated with parents or guardians on flights, but regulations resulting from the law have yet to be drafted by the Federal Aviation Administration.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/do-airlines-split-up-families-so-they-pay-extra-for-seat-allocation-2018-02-05
I think you’re missing a couple of things in your analysis. First, since Delta doesn’t believe in transparency, we don’t actually know if Economy Minus awards are actually cheaper than regular Economy, or if Delta simply “enhanced” the award chart by making the existing award levels track to Basic Economy, with a higher cost for Main Cabin. Considering this is what was done with revenue fares when Economy Minus was introduced, I suspect this is probably the case.
Second, the reality is, in the monkey see-monkey do environment we currently live in, it is only a matter of time before American and United copy what Delta just did. And again, I have to think this isn’t going to be an actual mileage reduction for Basic, but an “enhancement” by making the existing economy awards a Basic Economy award, and implementing a new tier for regular economy. Or playing games by only making Saver awards available in Basic, thus forcing you to an Anytime award for regular coach. Then again, if they do that, considering there’s basically zero Saver availability to begin with, maybe it really IS an enhancement…
I’m going to disagree that this is good news. Basic economy as we know has nothing to do with offering customers cheaper fares. It exists so that airlines can charge more for their full service product especially for corporate customers whose travel search engines don’t look at basic economy fares.
I think that basic economy awards are going to be the same thing. They are not going to represent a price reduction at all. Airlines will continue to charge the same number of points for basic economy that they used to charge for regular economy once this gets implemented. What this is going to mean is that the cost of redemptions in regular economy (and quite probably other classes as well) will increase. Now of course as you’ve indicated for Elites etc the net change in experience is likely to be minmimal. But the fact is they are taking away things that used to be included in the cheapest redemptions and forcing you to pay more if you want them.
Remember too that implementing this change had to have a cost to Delta. They have spent that money because they intend to get a return on that investment. In this case the return is through yet another devaluation of what you can get for your SkyPesos pitched as a customer “enhancement”.
In researching Delta Basic Economy for a family vacation, it looks like you can book a basic economy fare and then select a seat 7 days before travel. for an additional fee. But what is a typical fee? All I can find about the fee is that it varies based on the flight-nothing as to what people have paid, what is typical. The round trip involves 2 segments each way and the main cabin price is $60 more round trip, so $15/segment, which I’m guessing is probably similar to what the seat selection 7 days before travel would cost. (As a rough comparison, when I last flew Southwest it was $15 for earlybird check in, but that covered all segments) I’m just curious if anyone has information on what the cost may be to select 7 days before travel? Even though the kids are tweens, it’s still important to sit together.