Delta “Basic” Business Class Launching Soon: Expect All Cabins To Be Unbundled

Over time, we’ve seen the concept of “basic economy” become pretty widespread, whereby the cheapest economy fares include the fewest perks. The purpose of this is twofold — to expand a carrier’s potential customer base, and to get existing customers to “buy up” to a higher fare, in order to avoid punitive restrictions.

Internationally, we’ve also seen some airlines introduce basic business class. Up until now, it’s not really a concept we’ve seen at one of the “big three” US airlines. However, that’s almost certainly going to change in the near future.

For some time, Delta has been transparent about its intent to introduce basic business class. While there still hasn’t been a formal announcement, executives at the airline provided more details during the company’s 2025 earnings call yesterday, including sharing a timeline. We can potentially expect all of Delta’s cabin products to have “basic” fares before the end of 2026!

Delta plans “basic” premium cabin rollout in 2026

For the past couple of years, Delta executives have consistently talked on earnings call about plans to unbundle business class, among other cabins (primarily based on responding to questions from analysts).

What would that mean? Well, it would entail more options when booking a business class ticket — the most “basic” business class fare would probably just include a seat and some limited amenities, and then customers could pay extra for fare bundles that include more things, whether it’s seat assignments, lounge access, or flexibility.

During yesterday’s 2025 earnings Delta, TD Cowen Analyst Thomas Fitzgerald asked Delta executives about the latest on revenue segmentation:

“Just curious on, at Investor Day, you talked a lot about the revenue segmentation and further aligning value with price. So I’d love to hear what’s next for that this year. And then on the technology side, just curious with all the advances we’re seeing every day, where do you guys see some low-hanging fruit as we move through 2026?”

Delta President Glen Hauenstein gave a pretty detailed answer, with more information than has been shared in the past:

“I think we’ve talked about really having three categories for every product, which is basic, main, and extra. And that continues to evolve. I think we put those products in place for Comfort+ earlier in the year, and that implementation is producing results that are actually slightly above our internal projections. So as you see us continue to bring that and move that up the ladder to give customers choice not only of the seat, but the actual product that they want to buy with that seat and really disaggregating that out. And that should be rolled out pretty much throughout ’26 and as part of our initiatives and our Delta initiatives in our plan.”

“And hopefully, those exceed our own expectations of how people select because I think that if you were offered a $500 ticket, there was no reason for you to ever want to pay more than $500 because it was fully loaded. Now we have that seat is $500, but you can buy it for $450 if you’re willing to get the seat assignment at 48 hours, if you’re willing to have it nonrefundable and then all the way up to extra where it’s fully refundable and you get the best seats unlocked at that time. So I think it’s the seat and then it’s the product attributes, and we’ll be bringing that in ’26. That’s one of our ’26 initiatives.”

“If you look further out, this continues to be a multibillion dollar opportunity to add high-value, lower cost, lower margin, higher-margin products that we don’t have on the shelf today. And that’s really what our retailing tools are going to enable over the next several years.”

We’ll see how this plays out, but it sounds like before the end of 2026, we could potentially see Delta unbundle all of its cabins, including international business class, domestic first class, premium economy, and more.

Outside the United States, there are quite a few airlines that have unbundled business class, ranging from Emirates, to Finnair, to Qatar Airways. In general, I would expect that “basic” business class could include some of the following restrictions, based on the precedent we’ve seen at other airlines:

• Fees or restrictions on seat assignments
• Fees to change tickets
• Limited mileage earning or status qualification
• No lounge access or restricted lounge access
• Restrictions on priority check-in, priority security, and priority boarding

My take on Delta unbundling premium cabin fares

Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve seen strong leisure demand for premium cabin travel, while business travel hasn’t fully recovered. This combination is a double-edged sword — it’s easier to fill premium cabins, but airlines aren’t seeing as many of the super expensive premium fares as they saw before the pandemic.

I would think that Delta’s primary goal with unbundling business class would be to get people to buy up to more expensive premium fares to avoid certain restrictions. I know airlines try to market unbundling as intending to offer a better value option to more travelers, though in reality, I suspect the cheapest current fares would often become the new “basic” fares, where fewer perks are included than now. So most consumers likely wouldn’t come out ahead.

Personally, I think the most logical implementation of an unbundled premium cabin would be in domestic first class, at least to start. I hate to say it, but this could be a way for Delta to reimpose change fees on tickets, by making these tickets not changeable or cancelable without paying a fee. Maybe the airline wouldn’t include seat assignments in advance, or something, but I wouldn’t expect it to be too draconian beyond that.

Unbundling business class on long haul flights is a bit trickier, as it’s a coordinated effort. That’s because so many long haul markets are dominated by joint ventures, which coordinate fares, schedules, and restrictions. Delta has a joint venture with Air France-KLM and Virgin Atlantic across the Atlantic, and with Korean Air across the Pacific, so we’d likely see this implemented on a wider scale.

In addition to the above potential restrictions, I wonder if we could maybe see the airline offer Sky Club access on basic business class tickets, while restricting Delta One Lounge access to non-basic business class tickets.

Keep in mind that Air France-KLM have already added seat assignment fees in business class in many markets, and in some ways, perhaps that’s one form of unbundling business class. I mean, I guess by that criteria, British Airways’ business class has been unbundled for a very long time.

Delta recently unbundled its extra legroom “Comfort” cabin, with the three fare tiers for that seating. I think that probably gives us a pretty good sense of what we can expect with unbundling of more premium cabins.

Bottom line

We’ve known for a couple of years that Delta plans to unbundle its premium cabins, including domestic first class and international business class. We’ve learned progressively more details as time has gone on, and Delta is now suggesting that this could be fully rolled out in 2026.

We’ve seen the concept of basic business class at some foreign carriers, and you can expect that this will likely include restrictions related to change fees, seat assignments, priority services, mileage earning, etc.

I think Delta is most likely to use this as a way to reimpose change fees on many premium tickets, in order to get people to book more expensive fares. I also think it’s safe to say that when Delta does go this direction, American and United will almost certainly follow.

What do you make of the prospect of Delta unbundling business class?