So I am flying through ATL on my way home to PIT two weeks ago. I get an early flight into ATL so as soon as we touch down I call the Diamond desk to try and get on an earlier flight to PIT. Now it was exactly 1 hr 5 mins from scheduled departure. The DD tells me that there were 0 available seats in coach but 3 open seats in FC. She says that since my original class of service was coach I would need to go on standby list (no confirmed seat). i agree. I am thinking I am golden for FC because there are 3 open 1 hr before take-off, and and as a DM out of PIT I am 100% for upgrades when there are FC seats available.

I take my time and get to the gate about 40 minutes before departure. When I see the upgrade list I don't see my name and all FC seats are now gone. When confirmed seat list shows I am in seat 38C (yes, the last row on an MD88, yippee!). So I go up to the gate agent to inquire. She is busy but tries to look me up. She says that because I was standby I was not considered for a FC upgrade. She also says that the odds aren't good for a better coach seat, but if I want to wait until the end she will see what she can do.

I am tired so I decide to just get on the plane. When I get back to the back there are several flight attendants chatting. We start talking and I mention that I am diamond and ask about what the gate agent told me. They are clueless to the process. About 10 minutes later the FC attendant comes back and introduces herself. She apologizes for the "snafu" and says "you should have been upgraded. There is a Delta glitch. We have seen this happen only a couple of times and so far Delta can't seem to figure out what causes it". She further says "we will take care of you for this inconvenience" and asks if she can bring me anything. I say I am fine for now and that I am happy to just get home a bit earlier.

Does anyone on this board know if what happened to me is how the system works or is there really some strange bug in Delta's upgrade software?

BTW, I never saw the FC attendant again during the rest of the 1 hr and 30 min flight. I glanced over at her at the PIT gate when disembarking. She was talking to the PIT gate agent and I wondered about what "we will take care of you" really meant. To date I have not seen anything from Delta; not a word or any additional miles, so I suspect it was just BS on her part.

Alright,

Basically if you are Same Day Standby on to a flight you are doing it for coach (the class you paid for). Once you are on confirmed or if you did Same Day Confirm then you would be on the upgrade list but currently if you are not confirmed on a flight you won't be on the upgrade list.

Feedback to Delta never hurts and I would suggest sending this one to them.

Not sure if an FA knows better about the Deltamatic system more than a GA, I highly doubt it.

I know in the old NWA system if you did standby you'd clear immediately into F if you were on the top of the list. The DL system I'm not so sure, it seems like they will clear you into Y first and then into F, but I'm not 100% sure.

A third scenario is if you are a ticketed confirmed pax without a seat. If you're such person and on the WL, do they clear you into a Y seat and then F if available?

The GA was correct... you need a confirmed seat on the plane to be on the upgrade list. If you are on standby then you won't get on the upgrade list. You first have to clear standby, however they likely cleared pax as upgrades to free up the coach seats which made room for you to clear standby.

Thats one of the reasons I only do Same Day Confirmed, and never go on standby unless I already had a paid F ticket (since that would put me into F if there is a seat).

This is absolutely NOT a "snafu" and the system worked exactly as it is supposed to. You were a standby passenger on a flight with no available coach seats. Therefore you were not on the flight and not eligible to be upgraded. Technically, if they were selling upgrades on that flight and there were confirmed non-status pax who could purchase upgrades, those pax could be sitting in F, then you'd end up in seat 38E that they vacated.

I've done Same Day Standby on "oversold" flights several times and have been thankful just to get on the plane. I can't tell you how many times I've called in to try to to a SDC, only to be told by SMS that I'm SOL, but I've decided to head to the airport anyway and, lo and behold, I'm able to board the aircraft. Sure, it may not be a great seat. Still, I got on.

Yup. That's the way it's supposed to work. No upgrade unless you have a confirmed seat in Y. And they normally clear the Y standby list after they have moved everyone they can from Y to F (to free up the Y seats). Works the same way on AA.

If you had talked to the GA ahead of time there is a chance they would have worked it to get you into a Y seat before they processed the upgrades.

"If you had talked to the GA ahead of time there is a chance they would have worked it to get you into a Y seat before they processed the upgrades"

Good advice. I will remember to go to the gate and talk to the GA if this ever happens to me again.