karatelovr

Hi, I'm a United MP flyer, though I do have a SM account. For my wedding / honeymoon in St Lucia, I have to fly Delta. Since it's a special occasion, we would love to upgrade (purchasing first class outright would cost another $1500). Since I don't have status to use miles to upgrade, I was wondering if Delta allowed UGC during check in?

IronDuke08

They do, but you have to be on a K fare or above I believe. Also, in terms of priority, cash upgrades are behind all complimentary medallion upgrades.

I have not flown Delta in the Caribbean, so I'm not sure what the loads are like on those routes, but I would say that your odds of being able to purchase two upgrades are generally not good.

Back before I started flying Delta frequently and didn't have status, I did manage to buy an upgrade from MCO-LGA, and I did it at the gate. The gate agent did tell me that it would have been okay for me to check in at the First Class/Medallion line as long as I was requesting a cash upgrade. If you're checking luggage, that might be a good idea and reduce your headaches.

Good luck

karatelovr

Thanks Iron - doesn't Delta have easy chickens? We'll be flying out of BWI and yes of course we'll be checking luggage - a girl can't plan a wedding and 10 day honeymoon on carry on bags alone! ;-)

ADLFO

No, our chickens are quite discerning.

karatelovr

LOL - I'd tell a joke here about free range chickens but I've gotten in enough trouble on this website for posting off topic.

Ooops, I just did it again!

thehowieee

Congrats, my wife and I honeymooned there; beautiful island, and generally wonderful people.

Evan!

I can count on one hand the number of times I have heard (or seen on the gate screens) an announcement offering gate upgrades for $ this year. I chalked it up to the reduction in capacity and all the MQM promos that have more Medallions on each flight. I just don't see DL offering gate upgrades as often as in the past.

mersk862

Walking through ATL on Saturday evening, it seemed like 50% of the flights were offering gate upgrades. There were plenty out there, but then again, you're not going to see a ton of Medallions traveling on a Saturday evening.

dsldog400

Recently I was going thru ATL to board the late flight to Seattle. FC upgrades were listed for sale, and being dead tired before the 5 hour flight I was somewhat interested. GA told me that I couldn't purchase it, even though I am AS-MVP Gold (credit about 45K DL miles per year to my AS acct.). FC had at least 4 emtpy seats and 100% full in coach.

Just how does DL sell upgrades at the gate? With not enough DL Medallions on an otherwise full flight to fill up FC, I'm sort of surprised my $$ weren't green enough.

ADLFO

Oh, your $$'s were plenty green, but your fare class wasn't high enough. YBMHQK are the ones that would have allowed a purchased upgrade.

N830MH

Nobody called me chicken. Nobody! So isn't K fares that I should upgrade into F class for my next trip from PHX-JAX next Saturday early morning around 12:55am. It will be automatically me into F class when DL will be sent emails to me. When I can read the emails to says when the upgrade is confirmed. I will have a nice trip from PHX-JAX next week.

karatelovr

I can't believe they would rather fly those seats empty rather than accepting extra money for someone who wants them - regardless of the ticket price initially purchased. That's just leaving money on the table.

I have to admit, it's one thing I like about Air Tran. While they can be pushy at times to sell those FC seats, at least they are available to all and for only like $75 a piece.

3Cforme

Not at all. Sell upgrades at the gate for $75 and the airline trains people NOT to buy real F fares at a premium of $ hundreds.

ADLFO

Good points by both of you. One way to handle this would be to allow the LUT pax to buy up to a K and then purchase the upgrade. You can do this now, but the change fee to get your LUT fare to one being sold on the day of departure (sometimes only very high priced fares) and then paying for the upgrade makes it financially unappealing a great majority of the time. Maybe a middle ground would be to have a couple of upgrade only K's saved for <24 hrs to departure. However, then, you could argue that such a process would eliminate some of the motivation to become a medallion or to buy full Y fares.

FOH

I purchased an upgrade CVG-SEA on a trip this summer. I was returning home and on an H fare so I snagged the last seat for $150. It was my first round trip on DL so I wanted to check out F vs UA and see whether it would be worth my while to switch. (The answer to that btw is definitively YES!)

I recently visited HNL and flew NW from SEA. They wanted $250 per ticket one way to upgrade to F. We declined their offer but I think it essentially would have made the ticket only a little cheaper than buying an A fare in advance.