The controversy and social media uproar over one major airlines' reaction to crowding in airport lounges seems to have made a difference.
At a Rotary Club of Atlanta meeting Sept. 25, Delta Air Lines (DAL) -) CEO Ed Bastian said "modifications and changes" are coming to its recently announced policies.
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Holders of Delta SkyMiles Reserve and American Express Platinum cards have been accustomed to unlimited access to a Sky Club lounge within three hours of a flight's departure.
But the new crackdown would limit visits — unless the card holder were to spend a sky-high $75,000 on their card in a year.
The new rules were planned to come into effect on Feb. 1, 2025.
"I have received a lot of feedback from this change and I appreciate it. I really, really do because it's important," Bastian said, his words recorded on a video posted to YouTube (comments begin at 23:18). "And one of the things about that feedback that you you look at and you realize how much people — particularly our loyal travelers — love our company. They love what we do. They love our service.
Bastian made a statement affirming that modifications are coming.
I will tell you that we're listening to the feedback. We are reading the feedback. Our reservation agents are talking to customers that call in and the feedback matters. And we're not ready to fully — we're still assessing what we do.
But there will be modifications that we will make. You'll hear about it sometime over the next few weeks.
We need to make certain that we can serve our higher tiers with the level of premium experience that you deserve and you expect.
Why Delta reacted how it did
Bastian also explained a bit about Delta's thought process on the changes it made.
No question we probably went too far in doing that. Our team wanted to kind of rip the Band-Aid off and didn't want to have to keep going through this every year with changes in nickel and diming and whatnot.
I think we moved too fast and so we're looking at it now. I'm not going to preview any of the the changes that we might make but we will be making modifications and changes because it really matters to us. We care about the feedback. We're in a business of serving people and we want everyone to be served at the highest level. It's just way in excess of our current asset base.
The Delta CEO addressed the reasons the airline began to make the unpopular policy changes in the first place.
"It's gotten to the point, honestly, where we have so much demand for our premium product and services that are far in excess of our ability to serve it effectively, in terms of our assets — whether it's Delta One, whether it's the Sky Clubs, whether it's the upgrade certificate, whatever it is, the special lines of agents that pick up the phone immediately when you call," he said.
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"And we have grown from Covid, almost doubled the amount of Diamonds that that have come into the total number of Diamonds — it's a large number of Diamonds, and all our Diamonds are special, and all of you are special — but we we've got a lot of you and we we had to figure out a way to make certain that we can continue to effectively serve those at the at the various tiers," Bastian continued.
"And so we did announce some changes a few weeks ago," he added. "Those changes by the way go into effect in 2025 — you would think they were all happening tomorrow. But it's earning level in 2024, which is why we're so early on that."
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