shipitfish

I'm sure someone must have thought of this already, and I poked around on the forums and didn't see it. So, imagine the scenario: You've got a GUC applied to a contentious long-haul international leg. Very few D1 seats remain at T-24. You buy a ticket for a spouse and cancel it a few hours before, thus making it a little more certain that seat is still there for the GUC upgrade.

I'm sure Delta must have considered this, and frankly I would never have the kind of money it would take to mess around with purchasing such an expensive ticket. But, I'm really curious to know if anyone has tried this, and how Delta prevents people from doing this all the time.

BenA

Practically? This will tie up multiple thousands of dollars on your credit card, and will only have a limited chance of working anyway because there are often multiple GUCs waitlisted for any given flight. And repeated last minute bookings/cancellations on a given name would be a red flag, and it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what the commonality between the flights was.

Contractually? This section of the contract of carriage expressly prohibits fictitious ticketing:

Ethically? Most folks wouldn't contemplate doing something like this, because fraudulent ticketing practices like this just raise the price of air travel for everyone.

ethernal

I'm not really sure this truly counts as a fictitious booking. It is ticketed and the OP at least has a chance that he would fly it.

The reality is that Y fully refundable fares on long-haul itineraries are god-awful expensive (probably more expensive than a lot of discounted J fares), so OP would be paying a very significant premium to execute this strategy.

I should know this, but do GUCs even return to your wallet if you cancel your flight? Especially the day-of?

MSPeconomist

BenA

I think you interpreted OP's post as proposing to "book a refundable Y fare, waitlist the GUC, and only fly the ticket if it clears". That's, of course, permissible.

I read the post as proposing to book a discount Y fare and waitlist the GUC. Then, also book a second J ticket for a passenger who has no intention of traveling; that ticket would be only to hold a seat in the J cabin, and OP would refund that ticket just before the flight departs hoping to free up a seat they could be upgraded into.

MSPeconomist

flyerUSA

It's crossed my mind to do this too but, being in tech, I am absolutely sure it is very possible to trace your activity and discern if you are just a busy traveler with changing plans or if you are trying to work the system.

(You get the GUC back if it doesn't clear. OP is opining to have two Tix on the same flight - one Y to be flown and hoping for GUC clear, and the other refundable D1 as a placeholder to be canceled. There's no risk to the GUC in this scenario, just a risk to your medallion status being punished and revoked.)

ethernal

Oh.. yes. I am re-reading the post now and it is clear that is what the OP meant. Now I get the concern about fictitious ticketing.

ijgordon

I'm sure a handful of people have gotten in trouble on lots of airlines, but you're probably referring to Joel Hayes, who got in trouble for going partway through the reservation process multiple times on a flight for which he had a coach reservation and waitlisted upgrade. This created active PNRs in AA's system in which the inventory was held, limiting AA's ability to sell it until the system released it hours (or so) later. Mr. Hayes claimed he only went partway through the reservation process to see the seat map to get a sense of his chances of the upgrade, and he had no idea that PNRs were being created in the background and inventory being held. AA "won" but IMHO they shouldn't have. (And FWIW, the only way to see the fare rules (and, for example, the change fee) on AA.com is to go nearly all the way through the purchase process, and the link finally appears at the very bottom of the page, below where you enter your credit card info, right near the final "Purchase" button. If this partial PNR thing was a real issue for AA, they'd make it easier to see the fare rules or at least key components of them. That said, there is an easier way to see the seat maps that Mr. Hayes wasn't aware of which is probably why AA managed to win.)

I think the moral is that airlines take this stuff pretty seriously, and they do have ways to ferret it out.
Years and years ago, Continental Airlines would not allow any ugprades to clear within 72 hours precisely because they were worried about this. But the backlash over time from high-level elites walking past empty business class seats when their upgrades didn't clear ultimately led them to rescind that policy (and possibly better surveillance technology to catch fraudulent bookings).

rylan

You can bet that the airline has software and people that monitor last minute cancellations especially of high full fare biz tickets and what happens to that freed up inventory.

If somebody does this they'd probably get away with it once or twice, but if done more often its a very risky that you'll get caught.

bennos

What makes this tricker for the airlines to detect is that the OP was "proposing" (in quotes because OP wasn't actually going to do this) to buy in the spouse's (or really any third party's) name. That said, I agree with the earlier point that this isn't a particularly great strategy from the traveler's perspective because

1. It ties up a lot of cash (refundable J is $$$$), and if you have that kind of liquidity you can probably just buy J and not worry about GUC games
2. Your released seat may very well go to someone higher up on the upgrade list

TerryK

DL ​​​ refund isn't automated. All DL refunds go through a manual review process. Be sure to use a different credit card with different billing address than OP. You may also want to book someone with a different last name.

MSPeconomist

TerryK

You misunderstood. I don't condone this behavior. I was pointing out that OP cannot simply purchase a ticket for his/her spouse under same credit card as stated in post #1 . It is more complicated than that. Also, I have had legitimate DL refund held up by manual review for weeks. I had to call in and explain why refund was requested and received it after more than one month later. OP needs a very very good friend this is maneuver. Caveat emptor.

shipitfish

As some in the thread mentioned, I have no intention in doing this, it just came to mind when I was doing what I'm sure most of us do to figure out exactly how many D1 seats are really still available: doing a search for 6 than 5 than 4 than 3 than 1 D1 seats to buy, and seeing where it changes from "Sold out" to an actual price. I never actually clicked "purchase"; I am pretty sure that just doing a search for N seats in J doesn't create a PNR.