Y Class Upgrades Discontinued April 30th
 

Delta is set to announce a "new upgrade process" for complimentary medallion upgrades beginning April 30th.

Apologies for not having a link or hard evidence as this came from an employee but essentially the process does not change, aside from the elimination of complimentary Y class upgrades at booking.

The goal is to "better recognize medallion loyalty".

While I have benefited from Y upgrades many times, this does open up a few more seats for the upgrade list. I see this as a benefit for DM/PM, but a loss for anyone who isnt normally top 5 on the list.

Just checked DLNet. This is confirmed for April 30th.

If true this is good for DMs (and others). On some of my routes there are quite a number of Y travelers and I miss the upgrade. (I know because I have asked.) Unless Y is still ahead, but just not done at booking.

I can see the business reasons why DL wanted to prioritize Y over DMs, however.

If all FULL Y class upgrades start at the DM/PM window, we might no longer be able to see upgrade availability at the time of booking. Everything will just be upgrade eligible until the DM/PM window opens.

However, what about upgrades from paid C+ fares? So far, it looks like they're prioritized based on the underlying fare class, so the best priority would be a FULL Y with an instant "upgrade" into C+.

This is quite a sudden change. I guess it means that after Saturday midnight in some time zone, there will be no more free elite upgrades ever before the elite window opens.

I've always assumed that almost no one ever purchased FULL Y in advance. Government YCA fares tend to be booked in advance but actually purchased very close to the travel date. I wonder how many lower tier elites buy Y and are upgraded before T-6. The announcement doesn't seem to say that Y fares won't still be prioritized ahead of all other fare classes regardless of the elite tier. On balance, the change would be that a FO on a Y fare purchased early gets the upgrade at the FO window ahead of all FOs on lower fares, or would the FO get the upgrade at T-6 after DM/PM/GM on Y fares and before DMs on lower fares?

BTW, has anyone found the new rules on delta.dumb? Are any bloggers reporting this yet?

I wonder how many Y fares DL will sell before the end of the month.

Full disclosure, I am not a gate agent so I'm not 100% on this and I won't get any training on it.

But the way I read the memo is that Y is still going to put you at the top of your medallion set but it will no longer jump you ahead of higher medallions. So DM on a Y fare is still higher than DM on a B fare but now a PM on a Y fare won't jump above DM's on fares that are less than Y.

It's hard for me to see the rationale for this change (from Delta's perspective). I would think this would disincentive people from buy full Y fares, which are some of Delta's most profitable fares. Could this change really be aimed at making the DM experience better, or is this just one step in a series of changes to complimentary upgrades?

Could be that they are trying to position full fare delta comfort fares in the space currently occupied by Y.

It's a matter of saving FC seats for DMs who purchase Y fares after lower tier elites do. With the upgrade at time of purchase rule, ll elite tiers are equivalent when a Y fare is purchased.

I would assume this rule does not apply to 360s. In fact, DL could easily make an unpublished exepmtion for DMs without it making a difference to anyone else since among DMs, the tiebreaker is time of upgrade request.

I've known some companies that require employees to book a fully refundable / flexible ticket.

as far as I'm concerned, W Prem Eco on TATL are associated automatically with Y domestic. So I often enjoyed immediate or early upgrade of the domestic segment of my TATL W.
With that said, for a while now, I've often had Y fares "eligible" up to the day of departure, and ended #1 of a long list with 0 seat available anyway.

With no inside info as to why the changes I being made my speculation is it has to do with a couple of things

1) Government fares YCA, cheap and that would cause an FO to jump a DM.
2) Shuttle Fares have a lot of insane discounts for some corporations in Y fares
3)trying to give a little something back to DM
4) There are some Shena that some travel agencies do to get upgrades for people that shouldn't have them...I will not go into more detail but I have seen it.

This could be the intended effect (or intended side-effect) of the change?

Other than that I really don't understand why they'd change it. Discount F fare is less than full Y anyway so why buy a full Y? Or does this just prevent some govt/negotiated flex fares from getting upgraded at booking?

Yes, I've also had Y domestic segments connect to a W TALT segment for minimal extra costs, though I've never benefited from an upgrade at booking since there was no inventory available.

Much of this is dealt with by simply pulling fare bases such as YCA from eligibility for Y UG's. Other items such as treating deeply discounted DLS fares as Y fares for UG purposes are part of the deal DL has cut with its top corporate customers. I would be surprised if DL can unilaterally end those deals other than when those contracts are up for renewal.

Finally, what are referred to as TA Shena, aren't really. Top producers are simply allocated UG's which the TA may then allocate to its best customers (or at least people it needs to take care of).

The bottom line is that with discounted F fares, people who want to fly in F, are well able to do so without having to play UG lottery. The losers here are people who fly on fully refundable Y tickets, but the reality is that this is a zero-sum game and somebody always loses a bit. It's not as though the full Y pax who is also a high-level elite either by earning status or having it designated via corporate contract, won't get an UG on a Y fare.

I thought DL was moving to treat the government YCA fares as other than FULL Y, in line with some other carriers. This would affect international partner SkyTeam upgrades awards and I guess any benefit that specifies FULL Y. We've heard of GAs re-ordering the gate upgrade list when they notice or look for YCA fares.

Regarding travel agent shena, are elites with Y class fares entitled to upgrade a companion at the time of ticketing?

Interesting. They've had this policy for a number of years. Perhaps they didn't see the uptake in Y fares that they expected, and given declining DM upgrade rates (at least what I and others I know have experienced), most DMs would appreciate the change.