Virtually all of Delta's basic economy fares briefly disappeared from Google Flights and other popular flight search engines like KAYAK earlier this week, raising the prospect of major changes to how the Atlanta-based airline lists and sells its fares.
What started as a strange quirk on a few domestic routes on Wednesday had snowballed into a nearly worldwide blackout by Thursday, making it nearly impossible to find and book Delta basic economy tickets while using one of the world's most popular travel search engines. By Friday morning, those basic fares were available on all platforms.
Whether this was a glitch or indicative of changes brewing in how Delta sells tickets via third-party sites remains to be seen. A representative from Google did not respond to a request for comment. A Delta spokesperson said they were looking into the issue.
From simple domestic nonstop roundtrips to connecting itineraries to long-haul international, basic economy vanished on Delta flights when searching via Google Flights and other sites on Thursday. On this roundtrip flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) to Denver (DEN), for example, Google Flights originally displayed a fare of $137 – a tried-and-true basic economy price point.
But after clicking through the departing and return flights, Google notes that “the price you saw on the previous page has changed” and only lists a pricier, $207 main cabin fare. Until these fares were restored Friday morning, basic economy was nowhere to be found.
Search that same route on Delta.com at the time and voila: There's that $137 basic economy option.
Same goes for big international searches, like Los Angeles (LAX) to Tokyo-Haneda (HND). You'd previously only see the higher, $945 main cabin fare – despite the initial promise of a $705 ticket. On this route and countless others, the popular travel search site KAYAK only saw Delta's main cabin prices, too.
Yet tap the same route in straight on Delta's site, and you'd see the cheaper basic economy option. You can find it on Expedia, too.
This same pattern played out again and again and again on hundreds of searches, no matter the route. It was a relatively short-lived issue, but still alarming.
It all begs the question: What's going on here? I'll be honest, I can't answer that for sure. But I can think of a handful of possibilities:
- This may very well have just been a technical glitch – an error that was promptly fixed soon after we noticed it.
- Is Delta laying the groundwork for its new unbundled fares, something airline executives said was in the works starting sometime next year?
- Maybe it's related to how Delta will comply with new federal rules for displaying extra fees? With fees for picking a seat and canceling flights, basic economy will be the most problematic for Delta.
- Or is Delta revamping how it lists and advertises its fares across the internet – picking some winners and losers in the process?
Delta wouldn't be the first to make a drastic change in how it distributes its fares as airlines big and small try to funnel more travelers into the most profitable booking platforms.
In a shocking reversal earlier this year, Southwest went the other direction and began listing fares on Google Flights for the first time before eventually expanding to KAYAK, too. And American Airlines wound up ousting its second-in-command earlier this year after its controversial implementation of new fare distribution technology backfired.
Part of that plan? Excluding American basic economy fares from several third-party sites.
This is a developing news story, check back for updates.