Ok to have two Same-Day, Overlapping Reservations
 

I know that if you do this on AA they'll auto-cancel one of your reservations, potentially with horrendous consequences.

In this case, there's no funny business; I've made one reservation probably now going to have go elsewhere and want to get a second reservation for the same day of travel (but, for now, I want to keep the first reservation in case that changes again). There are no flights in common between the two reservations, but the flight times do overlap. Both reservations have a $150 fee, so Ill eventually just eat that on the trip I don't take.

Any experiences with this type of situation on Delta?

DL will attempt to cancel duplicate/conflicting reservations. I have had this happen before; however, my reservations were not ticketed at the time so I do not know if they contact you before cancelling one if it is already ticketed.

They did not contact me and simply cancelled the older (first booked) non ticketed ressie.

What did DL say when you called?

If it were me, I would not put my DL frequent flyer number in one reservation until you know which one you will use. Chances are they can figure out with full legal name and birthdate that it is the same person, but with the same SkyMiles number in the reservations it is much easier to detect.

Once you know which reservation you will use, then add your frequent flyer number to the second res.

I'm not at that point yet. I don't want to cancel the first reservation now unless I really have to. If Delta allows this, then I am fine. If they don't, things are more complicated as I would prefer to lock in a good fare for the second trip now. There's a small chance I could make the second trip depart on a different day to avoid problems if Delta does do auto-cancelling of reservations without warning to people.

I'm wondering how others have handled similar situations and if they have direct experience with how Delta treats this scenario.

Seems to me if you have already paid for the reservation and DL cancels one or the other, you have a case for a full refund. You paid for the flight. I guess it might be worth a check of their CofC to see if it addresses this issue.

Is it reasonable/possible to select flight times for the second reservation so that the reservations are no longer overlapping on the same day? Even if this would require that you book flights that are different from the ones you want, perhaps you could plan to SDC. Presumably, by your day of travel, you would have canceled the ticket you didn't need.

If you pay by a different credit card for your second reservation, do NOT login to SkyMiles when you book the second res and do NOT include your FF# on the second reservation, I don't see how Delta can possibly cancel any reservation. There are too many people with the same names and possibly same birthday, and there's no simple way for Delta to know that these two reservations belong to the same person. :p

I agree, don't include your FF#

Agree with all this advice, and maybe you tend to mistype your birthday on occasion? Should be able to change it back when the time comes.

I have made overlapping reservations many times without issues. There is no rule that says you must be certain which trip you are taking.

I had overlapping PNRs a couple of weeks ago. Stayed that way for several weeks. Day before travel I called and CX'd the one that fell through, leaving other intact. I had been UG'd on the one I CX'd, and UG'd on the return only for the one I kept but did manage to get BF UG'd on outbound for the the one I kept.

The 1st had me on the ~9AM departure, the 2nd on a ~10:30 AM departure same day both through ATL but to different destinations. When I called, the agent was very helpful and even offered to fully refund the non-refundable 1st PNR since they were overlapping. Apparently they can do a lot more than they normally let on.

The stupid DL app on my phone kept on sending me updates on the 1st even thought I refreshed my itineraries in it and the 1st was gone. Even days later for the return portion, the app kept me informed of the flights I no longer had. That was very confusing to me as gate changes and delays kept appearing and I had to pay close attention to the details.

Fully agree on the advice to leave out your Skymiles #; not sure what to do about the birthday. Was forced to book on a competing carrier a couple of years ago because of the non-overlapping res rule: with few seats remaining to a busy business destination, and a long-booked leisure reservation potentially conflicting, DL refused to sell a ticket & instructed our corporate travel agent not to issue one using the workarounds suggested here.

FWIW, I have booked multiple tickets even on the same flight from time to time and have not have any trouble (with the same CC and SM#). That said, I usually do it only in the day or two before departure, and generally with fully refundable fares, so DL is likely to want the revenue ;)

I do, however, believe it is strictly against the CoC, so one likely has little recourse should DL decide to cancel one (or more) duplicate/conflicting reservations during their flight firming processes.

I had overlapping reservations by mistake a few weeks ago. Was completing a business trip, and then starting a short w/e trip for pleasure and somehow booked the wrong departing flight for the second trip. Decided that if Delta ended up cancelling the second trip, then it would have been my own fault and wasn't going to worry about it. Turned out that I was able to SDC onto a later flight on the day, and all was ok.