It looks like Delta Air Lines’ industry leading seat blocking policy will end in a few weeks. On the plus side, Delta will improve its in-flight service around the same time. The airline has also announced positive changes to the SkyMiles Medallion qualification for 2021.
Delta will stop blocking seats on May 1st
Delta has been blocking a significant proportion of the seats on all flights since April 2020. The policy was adjusted over time, but it was the best in the business. While Alaska, JetBlue and Southwest also blocked seats in some cases, none of them did so for as long and as consistently as Delta.
This will finally come to an end when Delta will completely end its current flight seat blocking policy effective May 1, 2021.
By the way, while I absolutely cannot blame Delta for this, I can’t help but smile at the way this is being marketed. Delta is almost turning the end of seat blockage as a positive, claiming that Delta is offering its customers “more available seats to choose from”.
Those social folks who loved picking middle seats between two strangers will no doubt be delighted to hear this news. 😉
Delta will stop blocking seats on May 1st
Why does Delta stop blocking seats?
Delta claims its seat lockout policy is based on both consumer behavior and vaccination rates. Delta now claims that the seat lockout policy will be updated based on the vaccination schedule for Americans. Specifically, Delta states that nearly 65% ​​of those who flew Delta in 2019 expect at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to be given by May 1.
Of course, I think another important factor is that the number of air travelers in the US has increased significantly in the past few weeks as domestic flights are mostly full and look very similar to what they did a few years ago.
Initially, Delta’s seat blocking wasn’t very costly as the flights were mostly pretty empty at the start of the pandemic. When Delta mentions that this is also based on “consumer behavior”, I believe that this is largely due to the airline finding that most customers are no longer willing to pay a premium of 50 to 100% for blocked seats, so that the calculation becomes difficult to justify.
Domestic flights to the US are getting really full again
Bottom line
Delta will end its seat lockdown policy starting May 1st amid widespread vaccination seen in the US. Kudos to Delta for how long it has maintained this policy. Delta continues to march to the beat of its own drum (sometimes for better, sometimes for bad) and this is another example of this.
In all fairness, Delta’s seat lockout policy was taking a little longer than expected so I can’t fault the airline at all.
What do you think of Delta ending its seat lockout policy?
