Originally Posted by
NWAsilvELITE
That is correct, when she did, she said that she could see open seats in D1 but the people who buy vacation packages from Delta and others, their tickets don't usually get booked or show up until August/September for travel in January. Once those seats have been blocked/inventoried, then they will see things a little better in terms of what inventory is left for UG.
I asked whether you have personally checked, not whether a DL agent said something (perhaps made-up) to you. It sounds to me like the agent looked at the seat map and made up a story.
To check what the agent said, either look at fare class inventories in EF or do a trial and error experiment of doing a dummy booking for up to nine D1 seats on delta.dumb. AFAIK when there's a group booking, the seats are taken out of inventory even if they won't be assigned to individuals and reflected on the seat map until much closer to departure.