I booked a trip about a month ago. Something the wife and I have been looking forward to for a while now. When I made the reservation, I chose to fly out of Miami. It's about a 3-hour drive from where I live in Cape Coral, but the idea was to skip layovers and fly direct. We learned that lesson the hard way last year when Delta stranded us in Atlanta for five days after a system meltdown. That was supposed to be a simple trip from Kansas to Atlanta to Fort Myers, and we weren't eager to repeat that mess.

But after thinking it over, we figured it might actually be smarter to fly out of Fort Myers again. The idea was to avoid the long drive to Miami (and the crazy Miami traffic) and just give Atlanta one more shot. The connecting flight I found had a 3-hour layover, which seemed like plenty of cushion. Either way, we'd arrive at about the same time.

So I tried to change the booking.

You'd think that would be simple. Same travel days. Same destination. Same seats. Just a different departure airport that's closer to home. Nope. Their system treated it like I was buying a brand new ticket. Not just a change fee or a fare adjustment, but the full price all over again. No loyalty credit. No practical logic. Just, "Here's your credit... now pay full fare again on top of that."

And here's the kicker. If I had never booked the original flight and just purchased the new routing today, the price would've been the same. The only reason it was more expensive is because I had already given them money. The new flights aren't sold out. I can see open seats. There's no inventory shortage. They just want to sell me the exact same trip for twice the price.

I could understand a reasonable fee for making the change. One of your employees probably had to take five or ten minutes to click a few things, adjust the reservation, whatever. Fine. Charge me 5 or 10 percent of the original ticket price. That makes sense. But charging me 100 percent? That's not a change fee. That's just, "Screw you, buy a whole new ticket."

This isn't just a Delta thing. I've seen the same behavior from every major airline I've flown with. The whole "dynamic pricing" model sounds smart until you hit a case like this, where common sense breaks down and the system ends up punishing loyalty.

I get it. There are fare buckets and upgrade rules and software that probably hasn't been updated since Captain Kirk was flying a 1960s starship. But from the customer's perspective, and I've been flying for decades, it feels like a scam. I wasn't trying to game the system or get a freebie. I just wanted to change airports.

The agent I spoke with was polite and professional. It's not their fault. But if your system is so rigid that a loyal customer can't make a reasonable adjustment without being charged double, then the system is broken.

And again, this isn't just Delta. It's all of them. Every airline plays the same game. What happened to loyalty? When one of my students emails me and says, "Hey, I accidentally purchased the wrong class," or "I forgot about this membership," my first instinct isn't to nickel and dime them. I help them out. Because that's how loyalty works. That's how you build long-standing relationships. That's how you build a business.

The airlines? They just see another opportunity to squeeze a few more bucks out of someone who's already paid.

And that's what really sucks. Not just the cost, but the message it sends: loyalty doesn't matter, and logic takes a back seat to the algorithm.

LLAP
RR

P.S. The funny thing is, we're actually saving time by driving to Miami. The drive is technically 2 hours, 39 minutes according the The Googles, but it beats sitting through a 3-hour layover in Atlanta and risking more delays from weather or another system meltdown. Delta had the chance to make a long-time customer happy and even make a little extra money by letting us switch airports. Instead, they chose greed over logic and tried to squeeze us for a whole new fare. That's not how you build loyalty.

P.P.S. This reminded me of a trip we took to Vegas a couple years ago. We were staying at Tuscany Suites and had already booked five nights there. We wanted to stay one more night since our flight wasn't until 8 PM. I figured it'd be simple to just tack on an extra night so we could relax in the room, clean up, and not deal with storing bags at the front desk. But when I asked to extend the stay, they quoted me over three times the original rate for that one additional night. Same room. No change. Just one more night. I checked online and the room was clearly still available, but the front desk said the hotel was "sold out" and that was the rate. They also wouldn't give us a late checkout. When I told them I could just rebook the room online at the original rate, they said that would be fine, but I'd have to check out by 10am and then I could check back in after 4pm. This completely defeats the purpose! So after spending thousands of dollars there, they chose short-term price gouging over long-term loyalty. Again, it's the same pattern: the system is so rigid, or so greed-driven, that they'd rather throw away a customer than make a practical exception. And we loved that hotel. They were off the strip, so they cost less. The room was nice. They have a Rat Pack show there a few nights a week. Great hotel. Lousy customer service.