Delta Air Lines wants to add even more different seating classes for flights
At its investor day Wednesday, Delta Air Lines (DAL) plotted a slow and steady course toward a cautiously optimistic 2025. But one proposal that caught analysts’ eyes was a move to break up its flight classes even further from the half-dozen options that passengers already have to choose from.
“If you think about the choices that they had back in 2010, coach first or business class, now we’ve got all these different cabins on the airplane,” said Delta President Glen Hauenstein during a presentation at the event. “But we really think that there’s another way to segment them, and I’m going to just call it out and I’m going to say, first of all, we’re experimenting with this.”
Currently, people flying on Delta can choose between no-frills Basic Economy, regular Main Cabin, a little more legroom Comfort+, slightly fancy Delta Premium Select, actually fancy First Class, and extra-fancy Delta One. Each new level costs more and adds perks that can inspire status anxiety for those not in their desired class.
When TD Cowen (TD) analysts were previewing the investor day, they said they’d be keeping watch for “the company’s efforts around cultivating long-term relationships with clients as their desired cabin section progresses upward along their careers,” and Hauenstein thinks there’s money to be made in slicing and dicing its segmentation even further.
“I think over the next couple of years you’ll see us attempting and really testing what consumers want in their bundles and what they’re willing to pay for,” he said. The carrier did not lay out any explicit plans for what the new segments would be, but Hauenstein said that constantly teasing new status tiers is just good business — one that Delta is expecting to become more common in the industry.
“That’s really the way I think good retailers work and the way airlines have not and the way that we’re going to transform ourselves over the next three to five years,” he said.
