ATL-FLL First Class goes out 5 empty! BIG Upgrade list
 

Its for certain. Delta Air Lines does not care about processing your upgrade. Team board-last DOES NOT MATTER!!

I am Diamond with Delta and its been a few months since I have flown them. I know United gets a terrible wrap (wait , don't all the US carriers) but in the last 4 months as a Plat with United, I have been upgraded from coach to First on the aircraft by the gate agent 3 times, each time the agent seemed excited to do their job and to hand out an upgrade.

Well Delta really stinks at this. I went RNO-SLC-ATL-FLL. This is actually the only non-red eye option which was my real reason for moving to UA. Reno is not a good airport for DL.

RNO-SLC--- 2 standbys ended up in Comfort + 4 A,B , My companion and I sat in 17 A, B. I will be happy to PM the screen shots for those who do not believe it. These standbys got those seats while we were still in the boarding area. I went up to the desk and asked why, she said she paged us but we did not answer! BS!!! We were in the gate area.

SLC-ATL - Upgraded since this flight was using an RPU...

ATL-FLL - #1 and #2 for 1 seat. We had no carry - ons so we waited to the every end. T-25 we get paged and I give my companion the upgrade and keep myself #1 on the list. I wait until final boarding call. My companion texts and says seat next to him is open along with 4-5 other seats. I ask the agent and he told me if I do not board now, I will lose my seat. So I board the plane and take my Comfort + seat which was not a bad seat but still... Gate agent gets on at T-5 hands something to flight attendant and flight attendant points out open 1st class seats. Gate agent says no time, walks out and the door closes (This is according to my companion who was sitting in 2C)

This ended up being a long flight. Anyone leaving ATL yesterday evening knows what I am talking about. I was 90 minutes on the ground plus air time.

I was happy with my seat, I do not expect upgrades so much anymore. What bothers me is when they are available and not processed or not done correctly. Here is a fact:

I flew on 3 Delta Flights yesterday and none of them had good customer service. From bad gate agents to lazy flight attendants, none of them with a smile on their face. United on the contrary has been excellent. They are really trying to surge and DL is sinking and they are sinking FAST. Only thing going for DL and I mean ONLY think is the entertainment screens.

United really is top-notch about making sure their F cabins go out full and in the right upgrade order. I had many, many battlefield upgrades when I was a 1K on United. When I first started flying DL, I wrongly assumed that boarding would not impact my upgrade chances (YBYL was foreign to me).

Sounds like this was just a pure failure to upgrade which is even less excusable - but wanted to reiterate the fact that United is definitely superior to Delta when it comes to the upgrade process.

I've had good experiences on DL and I've had bad (even terrible) experiences on DL.
I've had good experiences on AA and I've had bad experiences on AA.
I've had good experiences on UA and I've had bad experiences on UA.
I've had good experiences on B6 and I've had bad experiences on B6.

I don't keep track, but I don't *really* feel like one is meaningfully better or worse than the other (well, B6 has the legroom...lol). There's a lot of randomness in this and few people really fly enough to smooth that out and get a real sense if one is better or worse.

ATL-FLL definitely sounds like one of those bad experiences. All you can really do is write to DL and complain (or just never fly DL again :)). Not sure of the going rate of compensation, but I'd think a 10k miles or a regional upgrade certificate would be fair-ish. No idea whether they'll actually give that.

I agree in general with what you're saying - but I do believe that each airline has things that they are better at than others. I have consistently seen the F cabin go out with an empty seat or two on DL (with 50-100+ people upgrade lists) while I have never seen the same on UA - ever. So I think it is fair that people complain about this point.

I believe it is a consequence of Delta's "on-time at any cost" culture and correlated performance management system (agents that get flights out late are disciplined). This has pros and cons but at the end of the day flight attendants and gate agents start acting crazy when it gets to crunch time on Delta - and this sometimes extends to when there is no real "crunch time" and the flight is on track to depart several minutes early.

Fair enough - I do agree that UA prioritizes battlefield upgrades. AA isn't great here either.
I was mainly commenting on the OP's last paragraph.

This should be reported. There's no need to page a passenger in order to upgrade. It should just be processed.

You could report this but unlikely that anything would come of it.
It seems weird that the GA was willing to upgrade one but not the other.

Please report these experiences to DL. I suspect that your position at the top of the upgrade lists was the result of using RUCs. You got the upgrade on one segment in exchange for the RUC, but it should have given you all three segments or at least the ATL-FLL flight, assuming that you had requested the instrument supported upgrade for all segments.

BTW, I'm not sure of the current rules regarding the use of RUCs to "upgrade" to C+ seats.

I really don't get it. It takes a matter of seconds to process the upgrades doesn't it? I've had empty F seats on 4 of my last segments with huge lists.

Today on LGA-ORD on AA, there was a list of 14 people trying to UPG (I cleared days ago). The GA made an announcement prior to boarding that FC had checked in full, but if something opened up they would come on to the aircraft and notify the appropriate customer. Sounds pretty simple to me and makes elites feel better about the no-show situation.

I wonder if you're trying to be sarcastic. You please marginal upgraders at the cost of people who paid for F or got the confirmed upgrade earlier finding their seats have been given away.

Delta has really gone downhill. Bubba is selling his stock.

Dare I go onto my usual rant about how well NW handled last minute UGs???. . . . or CO, for that matter.