Delta Air Lines is preparing to revamp their entire approach to business class. At the airline’s Investor Day a week ago they revealed plans to ‘unbundle’ the product so that customers paying the lowest business class fare won’t get as much as before – they’d have to pay more, in all likelihood, for things like seat assignments, flight changes, and lounge access.
Airline President Glen Hauenstein called the model ‘good/better/best’ where customers choose what level of investment they want to make in their travel – but the airline was scant with details. Aviation watchdog JonNYC says that this is currently slated for 2026.
JonNYC previously leaked that Delta had a plan to overhaul its business class means, wine, and service. This includes new bedding from Missoni, food from caterer Do&Co, along with servingware.
He’s now shared a great deal more of the specifics of what’s currently in the hopper. He identifiies:
- elevated business class bedding and cuddle pillows (United currently has Delta beat by a wide margin with their Saks bedding)
- an improved meals product and serviceware from caterer Do&Co
- elevated beverage offerings (finally decent wines, it seems) and perhaps better headphones as well.
- expanded pre-select meal offerings.
This is all likely to come with a round of flight attendant training on the new products and elevated service standards, and the impetus here appears to be that Delta’s transatlantic business class net promoter scores have fallen 28% compared to where they were before the pandemic – and indeed those scores were even worse last year.
The improved soft product and service sounds great in theory, but we’ll have to see what the actual new inflight product is like before rendering judgment.
What I’ve heard whispers of though is a real improvement. More fundamentally, though, it may not move the needle on net promoter score the way that Delta hopes because of the hard product (seat).
- while United has moved forward completing the retrofit of its full international business class fleet with Polaris seats (which are themselves lacking in storage space and doors), Delta is still flying largely ‘open’ old-style business seats on their workhouse fleet of Boeing 767s – with no plans in place to do anything about it.
- As long as Delta is flying a substantial number of planes with business class hard product that lags both United and American, customers are going to be disappointed.
- The airline is apparently introducing an improved version of its business class seat on the Airbus A350-1000 which should come in 2026 as well – and JonNYC says their first modified Airbus A330s after that in 2026 as well:
It’s possible that not everything in the planned business class refresh makes it into the final offering, since it seems not all of the details have been funded yet.
However it’s clear that Delta intends to change a great deal about its business class soft product over the next 1-2 years at the same time they plan to
At the same time, it’s an odd way to improve net promoter score of their product to strip benefits from it on their lowest fares.
In the future, you might buy a business class ticket from Delta and have to check in with economy passengers, get turned away at the lounge and pay for checked bags – unless you spend for a bundle (‘better’ or ‘best’) that includes those things.
