Delta Air Lines confirmed during its second quarter earnings call a plan for ‘basic business.’ Just like they have ‘unbundled’ economy class, offering basic economy that doesn’t allow changes or mileage-earning and where you don’t get to pick your own seat, they view ‘unbundling’ of the features of business class a new step in maximizing revenue from customers.
J.P. Morgan’s Jamie Baker asked Delta President Glen Hauenstein about the idea during the call,
Glen, this concept of unbundling the front cabin is one that I’ve been thinking about, in part because unbundling and segmenting the rear cabin has been such a success for Delta and a few others. I want to be careful about asking about future pricing on that. But I’m curious what the pros and cons are in terms of possibly going down this path? Or is one price for all how we should continue to think about the D One cabin?
Hauenstein confirmed that they’re planning a basic business product, and that they’ll be announcing it at their Investor Day this fall, “We’ve talked conceptually about that. I think we’ll be giving you more details as we go, but we’re not ready to talk about the details of those plans moving forward. I think the investor day this year should be very exciting.”
Delta wouldn’t be the first airline to do this, but if Delta does it then we’ll certainly see more follow. First, because other airlines think Delta is smarter than they are – if Delta does it, it must be right. Second, because Delta owns significant stakes in airlines around the world like Air France KLM, Virgin Atlantic, Korean Air, LATAM, and more.
KLM Business Class
So what is an ‘unbundled’ business class like? British Airways charges for advance seat assignments in business class, unless you have status or are on a full fare ticket.
British Airways Business Class
Emirates started selling ‘basic business class’ fares in 2020. Qatar Airways followed, restricting access to lounges and to advance seat selection on the cheapest business class tickets. Finnair’s 2021 entry into this space was absolutely brutal:
- Pay to check bags
- Pay for seat assignments
- Lounge access not included
- No business class check-in, priority boarding, or premium security
- No changes or cancellations
Emirates A380 Business Class
You might buy a business class ticket from Europe to Asia in business class, have to check in with economy passengers, get turned away at the lounge and pay for checked bags.
While Basic Economy has caught on and had mixed results, it’s going to be a lot harder to do with Business Class and that strategy will probably cost an airline more than it’ll generate in incremental revenue. Your cable television bill helps explain why.
Why Basic Economy Can Be Useful
Basic economy isn’t about what most people think it’s about. It isn’t primarily a way to get customers to spend a little more on each ticket, maybe $20 more each way. It’s a tool for price discrimination – to segment business travelers from leisure travelers.
Traditionally business travelers bought expensive last minute tickets, while leisure travelers bought cheap tickets far in advance. Fare structures promoted this. When a plane takes off with empty seats, they can never sell those seats ago. That’s call spoiling inventory. And since there’s almost no extra cost to carry an additional passenger once a plane is flying anyway (a little extra fuel based on the weight of that passenger in coach), any money they get is worthwhile.
However airlines don’t want to sell tickets at a lower price than a customer is willing to pay. So they work hard to charge high prices to those willing to pay high prices, yet still fill those empty seats with low fares.
They used to do that with:
- High fares for last minute purchases
- Saturday night stay requirements on cheap fares
- 14- or 21-day advance purchase requirements for the best fares
- High change fees, that make it impractical to buy a cheap ticket unless your plans are firm
Those strategies broke down over time as low cost carriers became more prevalent and adopted different pricing strategies – one way tickets for half the price of a round trip (so no Saturday stay required), cheap fares available at the last minute. Major carriers had to match or lose those incremental sales, but matching meant that business travelers could buy the cheap tickets too. That hurt the revenue they earned from their most lucrative customers.
United Airlines Boeing 777-300ER Economy
Corporate travelers have largely gone along. Big businesses haven’t required their employees to book the cheapest Basic Economy fares. An airline can offer cheap fares with restrictions to leisure travelers, while charging higher non-Basic prices to business travelers.
Restrictions on basic economy have been reduced in some cases. Only United Airlines restricts you from bringing a carry-on bag on board with these fares, and won’t allow you to skip the check-in lines if you aren’t checking bags. When United Airlines rolled out Basic Economy in pre-Covid times it cost them $100 million from customers booking away onto other carriers. American Airlines has change penalties and lower mileage-earning.
Business Class Is Different
For a decade, since Basic Economy debuted, there’s been discussion of whether Basic Business could make sense. It largely didn’t. However there may need to be deeper thinking about how to make it work with changing consumer behavior as business class has become a premium leisure phenomenon and not just a corporate managed travel one (it was called business for a reason).
Up until now airlines have been able to retain their traditional restrictions on deeply discounted business class fares, differentiating leisure travelers from business travelers. Those cheap business class tickets have historically had to be purchased about 50 days in advance of travel which doesn’t work well for business customers. Airlines haven’t needed Basic Business. And the prices on the table to incrementally purchase services bundled with business class tickets have been so high that they likely would have meant more people buying Basic Business, and lower total revenue to the airline, as I’ll explain in greater detail in the next section.
So how do you continue to segment customers willing to pay more from those you need to discount to generate business from? It’s hard. The traditional strategies all have problems.
- No carry on bag. This is a significant restriction for short distance flights, where time spent at baggage claim is a meaningful portion of the total journey, and where turning around the same day or after just a few days is common. For longer journeys where people are buying flat bed seats the ability to only bring what you need for the flight itself into the cabin isn’t a significant restriction.
- No lounge access. The savings from one less person using a lounge is very low. If you set the price equally low people may buy it but it won’t do the job of Basic Business in keeping high fare customers from buying the fares. If you set the price of lounge access high, people will forego it and trade down to Basic Business. It will cost the airline more revenue (people opting for the lower fare) than they’ll generate in savings, and won’t be enough of a reason for people to spend say $500 a ticket more. That’s an expensive waiting room>
In any case the choice often isn’t between spend $500 for lounge access on an itinerary or have nowhere comfortable to wait. A customer can use a pay-in lounge. Many airlines offer lounge day passes for less. They can get a credit card that comes with Priority Pass. Their elite status may entitle them to lounge access even if their fare doesn’t. Or they could take a small fraction of the money and have perhaps a better meal than the lounge would offer inside an airport restaurant.
- Non-refundable and non-changeable. This is a big restriction when buying tickets 50 days in advance, much less so close to departure. However booking a couple of weeks out, it could make sense for someone whose plans are meaningfully likely to change to spend a couple hundred extra dollars to ensure the entire fare isn’t wasted.
- No elite qualifying credit. This would be particularly bizarre, rewarding loyalty for a less expensive coach ticket while providing no credit towards recognition on the more expensive albeit discounted business one.
United Polaris Lounge, San Francisco
While the concept of Basic Business – the need to segregate high fare passengers from low fare ones in order to discount available seats without cannibalizing revenue (allowing people who would pay more to get their tickets for less) – is an intriguing one, no one has come up with a way yet to make it really work.
Furthermore, much of the benefit of unbundling domestic economy is driven by the tax code. U.S. airlines save the 7.5% federal excise tax on airfare when part of the ticket cost is moved out of the fare and into fees. But that benefit doesn’t apply to international, and there aren’t as many premium passengers so it doesn’t scale as well domestically.
Why Bundling Services Makes More Sense Than Unbundling When Marginal Cost Is Near Zero
Cable TV providers bundle ‘packages’ of channels instead of selling each channel individually because it is profit-maximizing to do so. The cost of adding another customer to a television company’s access to Fox News or ESPN is near zero, and so a bundled strategy makes sense. And notice that even new ‘cut the cord’ TV streaming providers are pricing the same way even though they’re built from the ground up.
Let’s take a simple example.
- Customer A will pay up to $100 per year to get news channels, but only $10 a year for sports channels.
- Customer B will pay up to $100 per year for sports, but only $10 a year for news.
The cable company might sell sports and news each for $99. Customer A would buy sports, customer B would buy news. And the cable company would generate $198.
Instead, if they bundle sports and news into a $109 package, customers get both channels at a price that’s worthwhile to each and the cable company generates $218.
The cable company gets more money, and consumers get more channels which are worth more to them than what they have to pay.
When the cost of providing a service is next to zero, then bundling is the clear profit-maximizing strategy. By the way it’s why as on board internet bandwidth has grown there’s been a move to bundle internet in with ticket prices (‘make internet free’). That wasn’t possible when there were tradeoffs between one passenger’s use of bandwidth and another – and indeed was still a challenge when Delta tested the free model. This is why I started predicting eight years ago that inflight wifi would be free within 10 years (so by 2022). People thought I was crazy but the logic was sound.
Putting carry on bags in overhead bins rather than the checked baggage hold, giving a business class passenger access to a lounge that the airline is already operating and stocking with food and beverage just doesn’t come at a significant marginal cost.
If it costs $50 to add a customer into a lounge, and some customers value that access at $75 and others $300, charging $250 is going to keep out customers and give up the $75 – $249 they’d have been willing to spend. It’s going to cost an airline revenue.
As an elite who has been fortunate to have contracts that allow me to fly up-front on someone else’s money, this could be what it takes for me to finally drop Delta for another airline or just buy the cheapest first-class or business-class product.
First, they gut the elite statuses by shifting loyalty from flying to spending money. Then, they limit access to the Sky Club. Now, they want to remove whatever is bundled with first-class or business-class? What could they remove?
1) Same-day change. KLM has already done this.
2) Rollback of baggage allowances. Maybe 1 bag instead of 3 bags.
3) No pre-selection of meal.
4) No lounge access.
Those seem the most likely to me, although I don’t know how they would effectively remove lounge access from Delta One lounges after just launching Delta One lounges.
I think less likely are:
1) No included meal.
2) No seat assignment.
3) No frequent flyer credit.
Either way, I don’t think this makes sense. It seems incredibly stupid to nickle and dime someone paying TWICE the economy airfare.
Lets be Honest,
Basic Business will cost the same as current business (at best)
Current Business will get a price hike,
Isn’t the concept designed simply to raise regular business class fares by making “basic” business a ridiculous value proposition? What percentage of people willing to pay $3,000 for a round trip ticket will give up a host of features considered standard for a couple of hundred in savings? The elasticity of demand for economy seats is far greater than for business class. And how does this work with upgrades? Would one now be upgrade to basic business (putting aside the bs about an upgrade only guaranteeing main cabin to premium economy)? Why would Delta antagonize the customers who provide Delta with the differentiation among its peers?
I would fervently avoid airlines engaged in such poor business practice.
What a surprise… Delta leading the way among the US3 at reducing product… again…
I can also see that they make the pricing enticing enough to get someone on the fence between economy/ comfort plus to get that business class ticket. This means even fewer seats available as upgrades to the delta elites.
Post-pandemic, Basic Business class offerings were essentially inevitable in longhaul markets. The Middle East carriers have been offering them for a couple years now, and sooner or later someone was going to blink on USA-Europe TATL flying.
IME, the Basic Business fares I’ve flown to date on the likes of Qatar and Saudia have been great. Rock bottom prices to sit up front on long journeys, and I still get my elite benefits. Most of the folks casting aspersions here will soon change their tune as BB fares liberate them from upgrade nonsense.
@Birny: I actually think we’re at the point where Delta can eliminate upgrades as an elite benefit OR make a new economy fare that comes with eligibility for an upgrade. “Pay $100 more for a chance at an upgrade.” Unless Delta’s revenue drop can be attributed to elites leaving Delta because of last year’s program changes, it doesn’t seem like Delta can screw its best customers enough for them to lose customers. It’s really quite remarkable.
We already know Delta offers customers WITHOUT elite status cheaper buy-up offers than customers WITH elite status. This has been well-documented. The strategy is to hook an unsuspecting or unknowing customer into paying for first-class or business-class in the hopes of hooking them on the product. Even if it’s $150 for a 1-hour flight on a CRJ-900 where you’re lucky to get a pre-departure beverage and one drink.
While new for US carriers certainly not new for foreign carriers. Many have to pay for seat assignment unless on higher fare ticket in J. Frankly, due to nature of the seats, unless traveling with someone I wouldn’t care and take whatever seat I’m assigned – not like you are getting a middle seat in coach.
Singapore Air (maybe others but aware of this one) has no refund or change on their lowest price J fares. Also, many have higher change/cancellation fees for such tickets.
Agree checked bags and likely carry on would stay. May play around with meal selection but don’t see that moving the needle. My guess is pay for seat assignment, no lounge access and no change/refund (or a higher fee for doing so) in DL’s basic business product.
BTW for those that swear they won’t fly DL if this is put in place you won’t have many options since many foreign carriers have varieties of these restrictions and I would fully expect UA and AA to follow suit within a matter of months.
Delta hasn’t confirmed anything but the chances are high that they have been watching what KLM has learned and may offer some even more discounted business class fares.
Despite Gary”s treatise, there are people that will generate more revenue by buying business class without all of the bells and whistles.
Since Delta has had very good success in upselling in domestic first class, it only makes sense they will do it on their international system as they receive scores of new airplanes and expand their network.
And, FNT, it is guaranteed AND WELL DOCUMENTED that your chance of a PDB is much higher on DL than either AA or UA
I’m wondering what the discount would be for basis business without meal service or alcohol, lounge access, priority and boarding/baggage.
Those are things I value relatively little (I can bring my own food, don’t enjoy drinking on planes), while the flat bed is by far what I care about the most.
This nickel-and-diming stuff may work for basic economy but charging customers for every little thing in business class is just wrong. God knows, Delta already charges more in cash or miles for the privilege of flying their “premium” product; Now that’s not enough?
Delta’s Business Class offering is subpar and making it more crappy isn’t going to help it retain or attract customers.
People select Business for a myriad of reasons: lie flat seat, free checked bags, lounge access , etc.
If they decide to offer this as an option. This is yet another reason to avoid flying Delta Business Internationally.
What about frequent flyer tickets? Would they charge fewer points or just more points for the entire bundle?
I heard they’re going to paint a few airplanes yellow too……just to test things and to help show their premium passengers the outsized value they receive when they fly Delta.
I was a fan until last this year. They ran me off with the Medallion and lounge stuff.
Boarding UA tomorrow in J for Europe stuff tomorrow and Star Alliance for all the little hops while I’m over there.
Well, if you were looking for a reason to hate Delta — here you go! And before a Delta Defender jumps in: Just because others may do this doesn’t mean Delta should get a pass. We can in fact hate them all.
“Unbundling” ALWAYS means price increases.
I can see a couple things with this:
1) Removal of any high-cost items. I’m not sure if Delta has any, but Virgin would not include chauffeur service on some tickets. That seems like a reasonable trade, and a service that doesn’t have the marginal cost issue that lounges or luggage does.
2) Removal or change to accrual. Not everyone cares about miles, but miles are a significant cost to the airline, particularly for these high-cost tickets with revenue-based earning. I could see an option with no mileage earning to carve out non-frequent flyers.
3) Preferred seats. BA does this, and with more airlines having differentiated business class seats, this could be a lever for managing seat access, saving some preferred seats for the higher-fare, last-minute travelers.
4). Lounge access: While I agree with Gary that it doesn’t make much sense, Delta is trying to “thin the heard” in the lounges. If they can limit people with credit card lounge access or SkyTeam status, why not limit business class passengers.
5). EQDs. I’m not sure they will go this far, but with the new Medallion qualification structure, international business class can quickly get someone status, but they might be just choosing the lowest fare. If they want to manage the number of elites, this is probably the one of the biggest levers.
This is great news. All I really want are the J seats. I like this trend towards a la carte pricing. Would fly DAL much more often if this happens.
Delta’s international business product/service is already sub par. And they already price gouge. Unbundling is only going to make their overpriced J cabins more expensive. All this makes the choice to avoid Delta (and presumably AF/KL) really easy. Bottom line: Delta can’t remove all the premium features and still hope to be perceived as a premium carrier.
I could get behind this. Simply because a lot of the stuff included is pretty useless. I fly D1 long haul several times a year. Half the time you can’t get into a lounge due to long lines and the express sign for D1/360 isn’t up. Sky Priority luggage is often near the end and only once in the last 5 years has the Sky Priority security lane been open. I’ve started taking my own meal cause the food is mediocre at best. Let me buy a lay flat cheaper and I’m good.
just a little tidbit for those of you that think that DL’s business class is subpar.
DL managed to make more than 2X what UA made flying the Atlantic with less DL capacity
Across the Pacific, DL says it gets a revenue premium to the industry; given that UA is the largest carrier across the Pacific – regardless of nationality, the data seems to see DL gets a premium over the Pacific as well – which is particularly notable since DL is half the size of UA across the Pacific.
Real paying customers clearly pay more for DL service than that of its US competitors.
and there are certain to be people AND COMPANIES that will spend money for an unbundled business class product if it means their employees can lie flat and forget many if not all of the other things that are part of the price.
Let’s see what DL decides to do but leading the US carriers in unbundling and increase revenue in the process would not be out of character for DL
Do airline CEO’s sit up at night trying to think of new ways to alienate customers?
@Tim Dunn
I Fly Delta across the Pacific quite a bit. I’ve also flown ANA and JAL. I would only fly Asian airlines only but my home airport makes Delta easy and the fact HND is a short taxi ride from my destination. Compared to other U.S. airlines Delta is a little better. Compared to Asian airlines they aren’t even close.
“DL managed to make more than 2X what UA made flying the Atlantic with less DL capacity”
Tim, do we really need to take you back to aviation finance kindergarten for the 100th time?
Your comment is misleading as always. Delta makes more profit than United. There’s no denying that. But none of the information you have access to can tell you how Delta vs United is reporting their revenue or profitability by region. Because there is no DOT standard.
You really need to review what Revenue accounting is and how it’s reported before you keep going around spouting this nonsense. Now, I know you won’t do that because MANY people have tried to remind you of the flaw in your dogmatic statements off limited data, but you should since you’re just wrong and trying to imply that Delta is making twice what United does TATL off less capacity is VERY misleading and just a lie.
Delta is more profitable overall. Of course they are. But that doesn’t translate how you’re trying to translate it into geographic entities.
The only reason I would prefer Delta is that I am more likely to get an Airbus and not a Boeing. In particular an A330, with its 2-4-2 seating, ideal for couples (no third person to deal with).
Otherwise, it’s United, Alaska, Hawaiian, ANA or Virgin Atlantic.
I think this is pretty smart. It will simply add a tier between premium economy and business for flyers that are cost conscious but value that first class seat to sleep. All the people complaining that this is gutting business class are simply wrong. Adding a lower cost tier does not remove the higher one. You can still pay what you have been for the level of service you are used to. This change will allow delta to capture more revenue for almost no cost. There is zero chance that they won’t allow carry-on bags when basic economy gets to carry one. My guess would be. No lounge access, no changing, no seat selection, and probably no points. For a leisure traveler that’s fine because you don’t really care about those things anyways.
Why do airlines still charge for snack boxes in regular economy / premium economy? Is the marginal cost not low enough for bundling to make sense?
H2,
and yet US carriers generally fly half of the capacity between the US and foreign ports.
US carriers have an advantage in gaining corporate traffic in the US – the largest market in the world – while foreign carriers generally get it out of their countries.
US carriers manage to make money with the level of service they provide.
DL manages to get a revenue premium on its international system – which they have not done for that long even though they have received a fare premium domestically for a long time.
Max,
And for the 1000th time, if you don’t think the numbers that United itself reports, then tell us how the profits should be distributed.
United made $2 billion less than Delta on a system basis in 2023.
There are good reasons for that difference.
The sooner you explain WHY UA makes less money – and not try to use some cop out about unfair advantages in ATL, DTW, SLC and MSP which have next to nothing to do with international profitability, the sooner I’ll stop regurgitating the same data sources that you want to pretend don’t exist.
If UA said the data was wrong, they would correct it – but they made less money in region after region, including domestically.
UA simply makes less money even though they fly more capacity in every region except for domestic.
Accept that reality and move on.
The cable companies that wanted to fleece their customers at the upper end the most and then all ends of the market are a big part of the reason why my stake in Netflix was originally purchased for less than 2% of what it is worth today.
Can we get a discount if we dont use the infortaiment or headphones? I bring my own entertainment for long flights. What about if we dont use the a/c vents, discount there?
Nothing screams “premium airline” more than “basic business”
British Airways got this ball rolling among legacy majors. They started with charging for seat selection in business class and things have gone downhill since then across more of the legacy majors as this “unbundling” disease spreads. And Finnair thereafter indeed became the worst of the legacy majors in terms of doing this with business class passengers.
Unfortunately, when DL gets on board such customer-unfriendly changes it will increase the rate of the disease spreading and with it the disease will get worse for consumers across the industry.
And it’s probably only a matter of time until an airline tries to eliminate elite status benefits on “discounted” fares of some sorts more than is already sort of the case at times.
For a truly premium experience, select Delta business class for your next adventure.
For those concerned about price increases, prices are always determined by what the market will bare. If they can charge more and fill the cabin, they will. This allows them more price discrimination, so they can get more leisure cash buyers in premium cabins with lower bare bones prices, while still extracting the maximum from business flyers…so it’s a smart move.
A bare bones business product would actually be quite interesting to someone like me: leisure traveler, no checked bags, gets lounge access anyway through amex plat, have precheck and clear…what exactly would I be missing out on with a bare bones J fare? Not a whole lot.
The last time I paid for FC on Delta was JFK to Bogota. They served a plate of spaghetti with Hunt’s catsup squirted on top and the steward fiddled with his telephone for six hours and gave me the fish-eye when I rang him for a refill of my cola. They already provide basic service and cannot even do that very well. Save yer pennies and get a better hotel room at yer destination. I hate people.
@ Gary — Another reason to avoid Delta like the plague. Hauenstein can’t be trusted as far as you can see him. Hopefully, he retires soon
@Mike – what makes you think the unbundled J cost will be lower? My expectation is that the “basic business” will be the current cost and it will cost more to add features. DL isn’t doing this to reduce revenue!
@Mantis – mark my words the “basic business” will be the current price of D1. If you are expecting something half way between premium economy and business in the way of pricing you are wrong. The “fully loaded” J fares will simply be increased
Can’t wait until “bare-bones business class” means having to check-in with an airline agent to have hand baggage sized and weighed and charged more money if it exceeds something like 8kg/17.5 pounds; or if it means having to wait at the gate to get seat assignments even as an already checked in business class passenger.
AC is correct that this will turn out to be like “basic economy”:: a means to get more money out of each passenger rather than to give passengers a discount over what they used to pay to fly and get the same services before. Just another way for an airline to hike prices or cut its costs all at the expense of consumers across the board.
@GUWonder, you write, “And it’s probably only a matter of time until an airline tries to eliminate elite status benefits . . . ” You are probably on to something. Not long ago, on its own award tickets, Alaska prohibited using elite status from another airline. For example, on an Alaska award ticket flying on any airline (Alaska itself or a partner), one could not add (say) an AAdvantage number to garner tier status benefits on that itinerary. Reports were that some British Airways agents were aware of Alaska’s policy and refused to add travelers’ alternative loyalty programs to their tickets. This would defeat a major premise of the airline alliances. Priority check-in, priority security, priority boarding, baggage allowance, and lounge access.
As someone who flies a lot of paid J (okay D and I) for personal travel, I am fed up with my options from DFW. I earn AA EXP despite avoiding, but also have LH SEN and Flying Blue Gold. RT fares to Europe are regularly 6-9k and Asia upwards of 12k. Sure, sometimes I can find reasonable award segments but with most discounted fares priced on a roundtrip basis the likelihood the Swiss cheese lines up for both an outbound and inbound award is exceedingly slim.
The current flying experience can generally be summed as: the food sucks, the wines are dreck, the lounges are crowded and in J at least, nothing feels special. AF alone is somewhat of an outlier from this.
Unbundled biz is just one more thing.
Eventually I will ignore my ego and simply fly Y.
Learn some econ all you anti capitalist conspiracy theorists. They will charge what they can get away with, as any company does. Nobody owes you a discount from status quo. Pricing will be determined based on supply/demand and competition. There might be a discount vs status quo, there might not. Delta still needs to compete on price with other airlines, they don’t get to just charge whatever they want.
However, there will obviously be a discount for basic vs full.
The biggest losers will be delta elites, as more price discrimination means more business class seats sold, and less available for upgrades.
Sure sounds like bad business for Delta and they will screw themselves royally
Tim Dunn is boring, really, really boring.
There’s always a risk of falling when you “keep climbing” and this would be it.
Mantis gets it.
Delta can and will do what makes money and nobody knows how to maximize revenue and profits better than Delta.
If the market supports unbundling of premium cabins, it will be an economic success for Delta and others will follow. If it is not economically viable for US airlines like it has been elsewhere, the idea will simply shrivel up.
Delta hasn’t confirmed anything but Gary is right that D1 unbundling is likely happening.
And what hasn’t been said is that AA and UA are probably the real targets because they give away free upgrades to a much higher percentage of premium customers than Delta does. Delta has done the math to offer large D1 cabins and discount a little bit in line with limiting the growth of economy seats even as it grows its international network.
@Tim ‘just a little tidbit for those of you that think that DL’s business class is subpar.’
If you were ever to venture outside your mother’s basement, and try Qatar, Emirates, Singapore etc., you might recognize that DL’s biz class is subpar.
I will concede that DL’s biz class is not subpar in one way — in terms of award rates. The 450-500K miles that Delta charges for international biz class awards is certainly not subpar, although I will concede that you consider them good deals.