Delta and the Discount

For a number of years, Delta Airlines offered up a discount to folks who were in the NRA.  Over the past two weeks....Delta dumped that discount, for a public relations opportunity with the anti-gun folks.  Georgia then said fine....we will dump your $40 million tax credit within Georgia.

Well....late yesterday, Delta wrapped up a check of how the discount had worked, and established that only 13 folks over the past year, had invoked the NRA ticket discount deal.  They were strangely quiet over how much the 13 folks had saved.

I would suspect that the tickets....if you went to the 13 folks....probably were in the range of $15 to $20, for a $250 ticket.  So they basically lost $40 million in tax credits over roughly $300 of value to the NRA folks. 

Around a decade ago, I worked with a guy who had five or six membership deals, and continually traveled and often bragged on his discount 'working'.  In a normal year, he'd pull out near $5,000 for him, the wife, and kids on travel.  Each occurred with a discount.  So our budget wiz in the office sat there and analyzed the impact of the discounts....asking the guy about the prices of tickets for X, Y, and Z travel....over a year.  The financial wiz then used a cheap ticket source and priced the tickets.  The membership deals in the end amount to about $350 total, out of the $5,000 spent, when you looked at the absolute low ticket offered. 

In simple terms, the savings did exist but was marginal. But the idea here is that people think they are saving money or getting a special deal.

For Delta?  I'm guessing the management crowd is angry over the loss of the $40 million tax credit and the way they were jerked around.  Thinking of moving the headquarters out of Atlanta?  They might, but they'd have to go and find a state with tax credits being offered.  Most of those only (I emphasis the word ONLY)....from southern states.  And those are all NRA friendly type states.

Added onto this episode, a fair number of people who were NRA supporters or NRA members....probably aren't pro-Delta anymore and would be easily tempted to use other airlines. 

The curious thing to this whole story are the 13 folks who asked for the discount tickets as a NRA member.  The odds that they are all from one single family?  Oh.....well....yeah, that might actually be true.