ograff

*Rebooked into G when a complimentary UG didn't clear*
If a mod could fix that that would be great

I recently switched went from GM to PM, and I know theres a thread for that, but this was too weird, I think it deserves its own.

I have a flight on Saturday. Today after T-5 passed, I checked to see if I had cleared, I hadn't. I checked the "Upgrade Available" trick. It showed there was indeed an upgrade available, so I tried re-requesting. Unfortunately, that did not kick the system to clear me.

I figured I'd message the twitter desk, tell them what I was seeing, and see if they could figure it out. Well, the twitter desk added a segment in G, but the description said Comfort+, but the seat said 2A. Clearly this wasn't RU space. I checked and my ticket had not been reissued so presumably I never would have been able to check in for that first class seat.

When I called the PM line, and the guy looked at my itinerary, he actually laughed at how weird it was! He got on the phone with a supervisor he authorized him to reissue the ticket to to agent error. After the ticket was reissued I tried to ascertain whether or not there was RU space available according to his screen, but he just told me that I was in first, and agents can't force the complimentary upgrades to process, only the system does that.

After getting off the phone, to satisfy my curiosity, I checked and found the website still said UG available, so I decided to buy an award ticket as a dummy, and see what happens. After ticketing, I was upgraded to C+, but not to First. Any ideas whats going on here? Is the tried and true "Upgrade Available" message during a dummy booking no longer useful?

MCO Flyer

It's usually on and off. I had a book a flight last Friday night for a flight on Saturday and both flights showed UG Avalible for a FO (It seemed fishy to me) but indeed I was immediately UGd to F on both segments. DL had been having some website IT issues lately so I wouldn't count on the UG Avalible tool for getting an UG.

C W

I have tried a few test bookings and "Upgrade Available to First" seems to have no bearing whatsoever on the actual availability of the upgrade

xliioper

Yes, someone noted in another thread that every flight is now showing "Upgrade Available" for both C+/F. Clearly, something is broken here and the website is not reflecting true availability.

C W

Unless "Upgrade Available" is the new "Upgrade Eligible" and we'll never be able to see the info again online...

xliioper

I'm not entirely convinced that the system would routinely open RU space without actually upgrading people on the list and that you could effectively "trick" the system into jumping you over the list by waiting to request the upgrade. But, even if that was true, how is that a good thing.

C W

I thought the previous status quo was that if all upgrades had cleared within their windows and there was still RU space that one would receive the upgrade instantly on purchase. This was indicated by "Upgrade Available" vs "Upgrade Eligible" to indicate an eligible (domestic, Caribbean) flight without RU space or outside the 6 (now 5) day window.

MSPeconomist

That's my understanding too......essentially that DL runs the free elite upgrade algorithm almost continuously in the background, although I've noticed that additional upgrade space is often released in the middle of the night. I've also had the impression (based on personal experience and what DM agents told me at the time) that if for some reason the upgrade doesn't clear automatically when it should (based on eligibility and upgrade inventory), an agent or at least a supervisor can force it, although for this purpose they followed the published DM window at T-5 rather than the previous reality of T-6.

aacar

That's how it's supposed to work, but something's obviously broken, whether intentionally or not.

I'm an FO, and every single flight that has a F seat for sale shows "Upgrade Available". Take tomorrow morning's ATL-LAX, for example:

ograff

I don't imagine this trick would cause one to "jump the line", but I do think that its possible there is something finicky when you book a flight, then move up a status level before that flight, and this finnicky-ness could be resolved by unrequesting and re-requesting an upgrade.