Just got off what will be my last DL flight of the year -- the rest of my travels for the years will be with BR, EK, and AC -- and figured this would be a good time to report in here.

I'm a first-time PM, having status challenged from AC 100K mid-year when a business trip to Tokyo had a great DL fare, which also nicely satisfied the challenge. Since then, I've done a handful of trips with Delta.

Final tallies, 11 of 15 eligible segments upgraded to F -- not including one RUC used for JFK-SFO. Mileage-wise, 63% of eligible miles were upgraded to F.

For my misses, ended up #1 twice (MSP-LAX and SLC-YYZ), #4 once -- (on an early-morning LAX-SLC that went from F5 to F0 in a blink... it appeared that some celebrity unfamiliar to me and her entourage bought out the rest of the cabin about 20 hours out), and one laughable result I'll touch on later.

On the C+ side, 3 of 4 remaining eligible segments (65% of eligible miles), all at booking.

Sat in Main Cabin twice -- once when I IRROPed away from YYZ-DTW in F onto YYZ-CVG on a CRJ, and once when I SDCed from an early SFO-DTW flight in C+ to a later SFO-DTW flight in Y because "on paper" I had a better chance up the upgrade. (I did not. Ended up #13 of roughly 100 on the UG list at departure. Should have kept my earlier confirmed C+, but F8 looked so tempting compared to F0...) Deactivated C+ upgrade on that booking because only middles were available when I SDCed. Still managed a not-entirely-bad "preferred" window.

Overall, and in upgrades in particular, I've been pretty happy with DL thus far... but after being a longtime AC FF, at this point "my carrier didn't beat me with a stick" counts as an impressive experience.