Weird Disrupted Flight Upgrade
 

Was wondering if anybody had ever seen this one before. Flying MCO->BOS today in Economy (as an FO, 5th in a 9-person list for 2 first-class seats) and my flight was delayed a half hour. On a lark, decided to click the Find Other Flights button on delta.com to see if there was a better mileage route available and was given several options, most of which were in First or Business. Bizarrely, though, one of the options was a First seat on the flight I was currently booked on. I clicked through and was upgraded to a seat in First. Ticket was confirmed and I immediately printed out my boarding pass.

Any idea why I was able to do this? This seems like a really cheap way to jump the upgrade list and get upgraded with even a 20-30 minute delay.

See now that is a glitch!

I can't wait to see the firestorm this creates! :D

Grab the popcorn! :cool:

I can't say I am surprised given how I've observed the performance of the iPhone App rebooking feature, but I agree that this is probably a glitch and shouldn't have happened. Basically it gave your ticket a Y upgrade priority (as I've seen it do for me in the past) and upgraded you immediately to a confirmed F seat. That should normally be fine if it's a different flight that they are reaccommodating you on, but probably should not be happening for the same flight you were originally scheduled on.

The first one ever that worked in a DL pax's favor.

Was in this pax's favor -- the number two on the upgrade list? Not so much.

Number Two would have gotten it for free. The OP paid for it. With miles, as I understand it.

How do you reason that the OP paid for the upgrade with miles?

Where does OP say he paid for it?

Well it did work in A pax's favor which is more than can be said of most DL glitches.

A guess: if the OP was on an UP eligible fare but at the time of booking A/P was unavailable would the auto-rebooking engine recognize the UP eligible fare and process into F during IROPs?

I figured it was a mileage upgrade from the OP's "better mileage route" phrase. Else, I cant figure out how this might have happened.

Perhaps OP rebooked himself into a Y fare and then received the upgrade from having the Y fare. That's my guess of what happened. Accurate? I dunno.

This is almost certainly what happened - an IROPs Y booking. I've had my same flight show up on the app with FC availability to rebook before, but I've only gotten error messages when trying to do so, which IMO is correct (if the glitch is going to let me see the flight at all, that is). I haven't had IROPs since the new app rolled out to Android, though, so I don't know the behavior now. Good ol' Delta IT. :rolleyes:

To clarify - originally was booked into U. Didn't use miles to upgrade -- when I referenced "better mileage route", I was referring to the possibility of changing my BOS->MCO direct flight to connect through ATL or MSP for additional EQM.

The IROPs moving me into Y makes sense. I also had the ability to upgrade into biz/first on many of the other available flights.