A video showing a man listening to a Delta Airlines gate agent auctioning cash vouchers to bump passengers off a flight has gone viral, and people online say that it's a good deal.
27.07.2023 - 18:25 / smartertravel.com / Donald Trump / Tim Winship / Will Trump
Yesterday, Delta’s lowest-priced business-class award ticket for travel between the U.S. and India was 70,000 miles each way. Today, it’s 97,500 miles. That’s an increase of 39 percent. Talk about inflation! And, adding insult to injury, the price increase was made with no notice to SkyMiles members.
This is hardly the first unannounced award-price increase since Delta ditched its published award charts. Prices for award flights to the Pacific rose in October, and Europe award prices will rise on January 1, 2017.
Related:New York Wants to Kill Airbnb. And It MightAs do all airline loyalty programs, Delta reserves for itself the right to make any changes to SkyMiles, at any time, for any reason. And with these consumer-unfriendly changes to its award prices, it’s doing just that.
That doesn’t mean that SkyMiles members are powerless, however. It is after all a loyalty program, and travelers who feel disenfranchised by such consumer-unfriendly policies can take their loyalty elsewhere.
Reader Reality Check
How do Delta’s award-price changes affect your loyalty to the airline?
More from SmarterTravel: Will Trump Hotels Survive Donald Trump the Candidate? Coming: Cheaper Flights to Europe, but Mind the Restrictions 21 Things Flight Attendants Hate About YouAfter 20 years working in the travel industry, and 15 years writing about it, Tim Winship knows a thing or two about travel. Follow him on Twitter @twinship.
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A video showing a man listening to a Delta Airlines gate agent auctioning cash vouchers to bump passengers off a flight has gone viral, and people online say that it's a good deal.
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It’s a fact of loyalty-program life: Airline and hotel programs periodically adjust their award prices. Of course, those adjustments amount to price hikes more often than not. And, all things being equal, higher award prices amount to an overall devaluation of the program.
As changes to hotel-program award prices go, the latest for InterContinental’s IHG Rewards are decidedly modest: Prices for award nights at 400 hotels will change by either 5,000 or 10,000 points, half moving up, half moving down. If it were just that 50-50 split, Rewards members might dismiss it as a wash and count their blessings. After all, “It could have been worse.”
For travelers to, from, or through Los Angeles International Airport, it may seem as though the airport, the world’s seventh busiest, is in a semi-permanent state of modernization and remodeling, with all the construction, traffic, and delays that entails. A pretty picture it ain’t.
Marriott has just published its list of award-price changes for 2016. As Marriott Rewards members have come to expect from these annual pronouncements, the news amounts to yet another decrease in the value of their points.
Overall, Delta’s SkyMiles program has established itself as one of the industry’s least generous loyalty schemes. To play, you’ll pay. But with this limited-time award sale, you can at least pay less.
With fuel prices at historic lows and profits at historic highs, the airlines have come under increasing pressure from the public, regulators, and the media to lower their airfares. Albeit belatedly, it appears they’ve begun doing just that.
Update from IHG, including effect date for new prices: “All reservations booked beginning Jan. 16, 2018, will use the new Reward Nights point prices. This is part of an annual review into the number of points needed for a Reward Night, and we’ll communicate to members through our regular channels, including email and our website.”
Hilton this week posted upcoming changes to HHonors award prices. While such announcements are almost never good news—and are sometimes positively gut-wrenching—this round of changes is so modest in scope that it’s practically a non-event.