Originally Posted by RhinoDL

Successful Application of GUCs

Although my partner and I typically use the GUCs for overnighting to Europe and then just Main/C+/PS back a couple times each year this year we decided to try to get to Australia. We initially thought this would be the last year of DM for me: but due to their most recent Skymiles update I now have it locked up for at least 2 more years. Well low and behold it was actually successful; I found a couple options where the PS prices were high (but not insane for 25 hours of flying) and the GUCs were applicable this spring for a 14+ day trip.

We didn't want to waitlist for D1 upgrade since reading a lot of the material here that seems like quite a long shot and we wanted to lock D1 for the TPAC 15+ hour flight. Essentially we are flying from ATL to LAX to SYD and back in lay flats which should help tremendously with the time changes and being able to hit the ground running. I'm sure I could have optimized it more but at some point you can't let better be the enemy of good-enough. Those 4 GUCs 'saved' me about $13k so a value of about $3250 each; well worth the diversions and sometimes less-than-ideal itinerary to make sure I made DM this year again even with the $20 threshold. Being loyal to Delta isn't always that bad.

One aspect that is difficult was the quality of agents right now; it took over an hour to book these and the only complicating factor was I used 5 vouchers I had from SkyBonus and giftcard; plus she didn't code the GUC properly on the ATL-LAX routes so they were waitlisted instead of upgrades although the web site indicated they were available. A call back to Delta this morning cleared up that incorrect fare bucket and they cleared; not hard but just stuff the agent should have done correctly the first time as I'm not use they would have ever cleared if I didn't take action to correct the fare class.