Can you upgrade an award ticket later on?
 

Hello,

My wife and I have award tickets booked to Jamaica and I was wondering if there is anyway to upgrade them after the fact? Such as a Upgrade certificate, more miles, or purchasing upgrade?

Thanks!

You will have to cancel/rebook into F. This will be $150 fee unless you are Plat/Diamond.

...and you can't make any change is less than 72 hours from departure.

If you really want F look for award space now.

Foo

Are you sure that the 72 hour rule applies to "up faring" award tickets into FC? I would think that DL would like to take extra miles for flights where FC is lightly booked close to the travel date. There might even be grounds to waive the change fee.

I would think not. I don't think DL has an 'upgrade' policy in the system. Instead, they would have to rebook by canceling their current res, having the miles redeposited in their accounts, and then booking a new F award. The 72 hour rule would prevent them from being able to redeposit the miles. Not sure if a supervisor would be able to override that.

I also doubt it. Certainly wouldn't risk it unless I was unable to find seats in F until then. May as well give it a shot..have nothing to lose with confirmed Y.

Foo

sched change?
 

I assume you've checked mileage for F tix--can be very high.

See if there's been a schedule change over 90 mins from when you first booked. If your itin isn't non-stop, a change of carrier (mainline to DL Connection, for instance) or a too-tight connection gives you the most leverage.

Even if neither of these is true, it can't hurt to call and ask. Your request is to up-cabin, not to up-fare. You're not changing flights.

Good luck and enjoy Jamaica.

Sure, they will take extra miles. They'll take all the miles from your original coach booking (forfeited within T-72) plus all the miles from your new FC ticket. :D

YMMV with getting waivers, as always.

As was said, I think it is highly unlikely that DL would waive the 72 hour rule for purchasing F awards. Do you really think if someone paid 40K miles for a coach award and <72 hours before departure an F award became available for 45K miles (in essence 2,500 more miles one way) that DL would allow rebooking? One of the main reasons for the 72 hour rule is to prohibit this and similar practices of rebooking to lower award levels.

Even if it was truly an "upgrade" from low level coach to low level first, I highly doubt it would be allowed.

Been there. Done that. Agent happily upgraded me for more miles. And it was the night before the flight. It was a long flight and it looked like I was going to miss the UG. The mileage difference was very high since the coach seat was at (shock) low mileage. FC was not.