Originally Posted by
mnbp
This is exactly the point. "Upgrade Eligible" means "Upgrade Declined". If you EVER see "Upgrade Eligible" on your reservation, CALL immediately and get it fixed. There have been reports here on FT saying that this has been noticed to happen weeks after booking but before the flight. DL has no idea why this is happening, as far as has been posted here on FT.
Exactly. Upgrade Eligible means that the passenger is eligible for the upgrade but that it has not yet been requested. Upgrade Requested means that the upgrade request has been processed and the passenger is in the upgrade queue.
However, delta.com uses the exact same "Upgrade Eligible" when you're signed in and searching for flights to purchase. At that point, it's used to denote that a flight has F/J seats that you may be able to upgrade into at some point. I'd suggest that they change the wording for when you didn't request an upgrade to something like "Upgrade Not Requested" to reduce the ambiguity.