I know from past experience DL will never reimburse an Uber or Lyft gratuity. And if you get a transportation voucher in advance of taking the ride (DL direct bill) it has to be a taxi not rideshare.

I did have them reimburse me for a full Lyft fare (inclusive of gratuity) a couple of years ago when a cancellation required me to go from JFK to LGA. In any case, this was a $10 airport train and the receipt said "Standard Airport Day Pass" (which is the only ticket that RTD sells to the airport). In fact they only had to pay one way because my previous day's "day pass" (which I didn't request reimbursement for since it was for my original flight) covered my trip back. I wonder if they would deny NYC public transportation charges (Airtrain, Subway, etc.) because those don't even have a receipt.

Delta has reimbursed me Uber fares, including gratuity.

ditto. Two examples - JFK > LGA missed connection no receipt needed; then hotel > IAD after flight delayed to 3am and next morning flight delayed 6 hours.

In my case, it was to and from an unplanned overnight hotel stay in NYC, due to a missed TATL connection at JFK (at the time, only one outbound flight to BCN per day, so I got rebooked 24 hours after my original flight). Delta reimbursed both the hotel and the Ubers to/from the hotel.

So a recent DL1668 flight needed volunteers to be bumped because of equipment change.

One couple got $2800, not flight credits but Amex gift cards?

https://www.reddit.com/r/delta/comme..._up_your_seat/


It's a Reddit post so who knows how true. But surely no fare for a SEA-PSP flight would cost anywhere near $2000, let alone $2800?

How would the economics work in this case? They needed 5 volunteers so 5 of the passengers are big spenders on DL or something that they'd overcompensate other passengers to prevent them from losing their seats?

Claim is that DL agents are authorized to offer as much as $10k for volunteers. That's in addition to hotel voucher and a flight the next day?

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Yes, Delta gives the option of a selection of a variety of gift cards and does not force people to take flight credit.
This started not long after the whole UAL fiasco... Delta essentially decided that it would not IDB passengers and would go to extraordinary lengths to prevent it. The dollar amount in the story isn't the highest ever... Here's the old thread on it.

Delta's model relative to the other airlines is to overbook more aggressively than AA and UA but to avoid IDB at all costs. You can see it in regularly going years without an IDB while they consistently VDB more than AA's or UA's VDB+IDB.

The mindset would appear to be:
* We'll roll the dice on getting one more high fares, sometimes we'll lose and have to pay out a VDB (and more often than not they'll end up finding a volunteer willing to sell their seat for $500 so that a $1500 ticket was sold... Making an opaque market has its privileges)... All in the game.
* When we VDB there are two passengers who walk away happy: the one who needed to go where they needed to go enough to pay a full Y/J fare and the passenger who decided that having a few gift cards in their pocket was worth more than getting where they wanted to go. Conversely, an IDB is sure to leave someone unhappy.
* There's nontrivial PR value in the rare cases where VDB comp goes high: the prospect of getting a multiple of one's fare as VDB comp surely drives some to play the lottery.
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$2800 visa/amex gift card to give up a 3hr flight?
i could rent a ford Mustang and drive for less. (minus the speeding tickets) :p

Does DL proactively reach out on maintenance delay compensation? We have 7 paid F tickets, delayed due to maintenance and now resulting in 2 hour delay at destination (After midnight with small kids). Also, I have a 7am flight the next morning to add insult to injury on another airline (not Delta's concern). Any hope for compensation on this? Dont want to ask if this is lower than the minimum for requesting something.

Probably not. 2 hours really isn't anything to write home about.

It is when you spend $2k per ticket and get downgraded on the second leg to middle seats due to mechanicals. But, that's a downgrade compensation issue, which I understand.

You'll have to be proactive for any downgrade comp and for the delay... its very unlikely that DL is going to reach out and give you something.

Those details weren’t in your question. :)

I wouldn’t ask for anything for 2 hours. And we’d have to know the whole story to be able to provide full feedback for what you’d probably get.

I would email in, after the completion of your trip, and request "downgrade compensation" for any passengers who were downgraded from F to Y/C+ as a result of a mechanical delay, and also briefly express your disappointment that the delay got you in so much later than originally planned. Keep it short and concise with minimal emotion.

You will receive a refund for the difference in fare for the downgraded segments (usually calculated strangely, but it's a refund nonetheless), $200 downgrade compensation, and most likely an additional gesture in the form of miles for the inconvenience factor.

Generally DL will not proactively reach out unless it's an egregious delay or very strange circumstance, so best to assume you'll have to initiate the conversation on your own.