Song is over, but the tune lives on

Delta Air Lines intends to fold its Song low-fare airline operation back into the mainline while introducing Song's customer-pleasing attributes, including live seatback television, MP3 music programming and leather seats, to at least 52 additional mainline aircraft.

Delta also will add first-class sections to Song's current fleet of 48 757-200s, making the product more attractive to higher-yield business travelers who can use status and miles to upgrade to the front of the cabin, something they cannot do with Song's current one-class configuration.

Song will continue to fly as a separate brand and customers will be able to book flights until May 2006. The aircraft then will be scheduled on "high-demand routes" during the transition, replacing widebodies being transferred to international service. The Song product initially will be offered on all of Delta's transcontinental flights from fall 2006 and eventually will be expanded to include all routes of more than 1,750 mi.

Song was launched in April 2003 primarily to recapture East Coast leisure traffic lost to JetBlue. It was expanded to transcon markets in the face of low-fare expansion into the New York-West Coast markets in 2003-04 but was kept away from Delta's hubs, likely out of concern that yields would be diluted. Ironically, that meant low-yield leisure travelers arguably were enjoying a better inflight product, for less money, than high-value business customers.

"As part of our [Chapter 11] restructuring, we have the opportunity to deploy Song aircraft seasonally to more profitable flying--including our hubs--and to further simplify our operations while expanding the great travel experience on Song to more Delta customers," Delta COO Jim Whitehurst stated.

JP Morgan analyst Jamie Baker viewed the step as a positive for Delta and a negative for JetBlue. In a report released Friday, he suggested Song will siphon "higher-yield demand from the competition." Legacy competitors also will lose out, he argued: "Passengers prefer live television and listening to 80s Classics over paying $1 for a bag of trail mix [Northwest] or having their pillow taken away [American]. Longer-term, legacies and LCCs alike will be increasingly disadvantaged."