INTL op-up priority (elite vs employees etc) and chances
 

Recent TATL experience with a successful op-up got me thinking about priority order of op-ups vs stand by list and about things how to do to increase chances of an op-up.

72 hours before flight:

• Available seats in D1 = 18 (according to upgrade/standby list in the App)
• Total available seats = 50 (according to upgrade/standby list in the App)
• I thought there were no chances of op-up and requested special meal for Y.

25 hours before flight:

• Available seats in D1 = 16 (according to upgrade/standby list in the App)
• Total available seats = 16 (according to upgrade/standby list in the App)
• Stand-by list = 2 (according to the App, I assume employees or others on tavel pass?)
• Flight is not selling economy, only business
• I removed my special meal request just before 24 mark, thinking that flight looked really good for op-up.

2 hours before flight:

• Available seats in D1 = 15 (according to upgrade/standby list in the App)
• Total available seats = 16 (according to upgrade/standby list in the App)
• Stand-by passengers = 25 (I assume most are employees, but I also heard that stand by list in the App includes confirmed pax without seat assignments)

10 minutes before flight:

• Was told by GA to board as there would be no more op-ups (few seats still available in D1), but I stayed at the gate.
• Got up-up a few minutes later.
• Total 10 stand-by passengers got D1 seat assignments (according to Delta App). At least a few of them had Delta tags, so I assume they were employees on free passes.
• I assume that 15 - 10 = 5 paying passengers (including myself) were upgraded.
• My old seat was given to one of stand by passengers.

Questions:
Were upgrades given were due to overbook or because up-ups are given before processing employee stand by requests? If doubt there were only 5 elites on the flight, so probably Y overbooked by 5, I got lucky to be last of 5 people to be upgraded and the rest of D1 went to employees?

Did I make right choices:

• Removed special meal request when I saw possibility of op-up
• Did not board after being told by GA to board

opups are only given to elites if there isn't enough space in Y (due to overbooks, seat equipment breakage/malfunction, etc).

Non-revs can clear directly into the best available seat and are not op-uped to J.

Op-ups, IF NECESSARY, will process before non-revs clear into J

I've seen a few occasions where GA's have proactively op-upped Medallions but there were more no-shows than anticipated. Once op-upped, pax aren't downgraded, so a standby could be cleared in the newly-opened Y seat.

Note that not all nonrevs are allowed to sit in D1, but DL would normally not do an otherwise unnecessary OPUP to create an empty coach seat for the nonrev. This was discussed in a recent thread here. YMMV.

Delta only op-up elites into D1 to accommodate overbooked Ys. Never heard upgrade done solely for restricting a non-rev into Y. I don't think meal choice or boarding made a difference. GA will find opup pax in cabin based on elite status in order to free up Y seats. It was possible one got skipped if GA could not find you in a hurry, let's say while in lavatory:D

I had an op-up from ICN to DTW in late 2016 and I also had a special meal selected. Just a datapoint that having a special meal does not remove you from op-up.

I’ve received an OPUP only a couple of times. The last time it occurred as I was boarding. The BP scanner beeped three times, then spit out a new BP in D1. So there was no hovering around the gate agent or passengers moved up after boarding. It was very clean and simple. I had asked about an hour before boarding and been told they did not expect to do any OPUPs.

Special meal requests can make you less likely to receive an op up. So that was a good choice. The rest of this is over analysis, and I believe karma will come back to bite you because you are overthinking how to get something for free. Not boarding when the GA tells you to? What if they closed the door on you?

I am trying to understand what exactly you did between when the GA told you to board, and when you were op-upped, to receive the upgrade - if they had already processed op ups and were going to put the remaining NRSAs into D1, its confounding why they decided to move you.

I had a string of TPAC op-ups last summer and each time my Delta App notified me of the seat change a few minutes before boarding commenced. These were SEA-ICN and ICN-SEA flights. It seemed like those flights were chronically overbooked in Y.

I was flying DUB-JFK(-LAX) in Feb. Both D1 and Y were wide open -- I was looking forward to a row of two to myself (i.e. poor man's business class).

The inbound was late, so departure was moved back 4 times, an hour at a time (luckily the first two were before I left for the airport). Just before boarding was about to start I was called to the desk and given a seat in D1 as an apology for all the delays. (D1 did go out with empty seats)

First time that happened to me.