Originally Posted by
icebeam
How often do you clear days in advance for first class seats? Or is it almost always at the gate? I fly out of PHX ( I don't feel like there is major competition here)
GMs can clear anywhere from as early as 3 days (and with recent changes that appears to mean literally ~72 hours, it used to be 5pm the day before) depending on inventory, to not clearing until the gate if DL revenue management holds back inventory because it thinks it can sell more F seats.
EDIT: I think I slightly misread your question. You can try searching the success thread for "PHX" (include the quotation marks or FT will probably reject it as being too short a search term)
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...k-thereof.html
and the 2016 version:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...k-thereof.html
Depending on your travel patterns the best benefits of GM over FO are having Sky Priority, waived SDC fees, and Sky Club access on international itineraries.