Upgrade priority
 

As a DL Gold, if I was avoid requesting upgrades for a while -- with short flights, exit rows in the main cabin are good enough -- would that increase my chances of an upgrade when I DO request one (for longer flights, for example)?

P.S. Tried to search for a suitable thread, but have not found one.

No .

Great, I will be requesting them every time then, since it's not a pool of non-requests to draw down from.

I like the idea of upgrade karma lol

Just curious to know what ever gave you this idea? :confused:

:)

My unfortunate naivety probably :D

Joking aside, declining a certain benefit to build up a pool of goodwill to make use of at a later point in time makes sense to me. Amazon, for example, give you a few bucks for your pantry shopping if you don't use their rush delivery while a Prime member.

Instead of upgrading an existing customer from M or M+, Delta could sell that F seat instead and benefit financially. However, on longer routes, I could then cash in that chip to benefit when it fits me best. Getting that upgrade on ATL-SFO is a lot more valuable than ATL-BNA ;)

Amazon is explicit about it though. DL is also explicit about upgrade priority and it says nothing about building up credit.

In a way the AA system for non-EXPs is similar in that you have to build up a certain number of credits/"stickers" to be able to receive the upgrade but they still have a priority ordering they follow independent of the stickers (which are just a form of payment).

As it would be for every single person that travels on Delta. Back in the 800 and later 500 mile upgrade certificate, silvers kind of rationed their upgrades but basically Golds would have enough to do whatever and Platinum was unlimited.

Right, but there is no way for me to swing the pendulum my way through declining upgrades on shorter hops to cash in the chip on longer legs. The only thing I can do is to keep flying Delta to earn higher status and hope for some luck.

But everyone else would want to do the same thing. There's still only a finite number of seats in F.

For sure, but not everyone's flying pattern is the same. To some people a seat in F on a 1-2 hour flight is a god's send and they would rather spend it on that. To some, they'd rather be higher up the foodchain for that leg to Hawaii or the East/West coast.

I remember those (didn't they date back to the days when it was either Medallion or Royal Medallion?). Since you could buy extra segment upgrade coupons, I didn't ration them too closely and would generally get pretty good use out of the 800mi SMUs. (BOS-CVG was one of my favorite ways to use them; IIRC, it's 752 miles....)

The ability to buy them predates me. I did ration them as a silver but I quickly moved to gold and when I moved to platinum, I had 60 or 70 of them in the bank so there was basically no rationing required at gold. Of course, the dreaded L fare wasn't upgradeable.

I haven't actually checked, but I'm willing to bet that, since way back then, BOS has moved a little bit closer to CVG.

;)

Another upgrade priority question:

There is someone ahead of me on FC upgrade list, yet they are on the C+ upgrade list while I cleared C+ upon ticketing. I'm assuming they booked after C+ upgrades were restricted to the the gate, but could this be a DM with a late ticket? Or a PM with a late ticket, and they're ahead of me because of reserve card or fare class? The first thought was that anyone ahead of me on FC upgrade list should have cleared C+ already.