How many Play the "Pay for the Upgrade It will be Cheaper" game?
 

I am just curious if I am the only one who gambles this way on Delta.

You buy the Main cabin ticket, in hopes that the upgrade offer is cheaper than the booking price for 1st.

Example: JFK SDQ on March 28th - April 26th, 6:59 PM departure $699 Round trip in 1st.

I purchased a coach seat for $393. During booking it said for 316 dollars more I could be upgraded to 1st I ignored that offer. After booking when I went to "My Trips" I was offered an upgrade to first for 109 each leg 218 total. Total Paid for First $611.

A savings of 88 dollars.

I have saved a lot of money this way even pre-pandemic. Although sometimes the upgrade isn't offered the same day you purchase the ticket, and there have been times I have had to pay 20 to 100 dollars more but overall I'm ahead.

I have done this as well. A couple of years ago, I booked a one way ticket from ERI to DFW, connecting in DTW. The ERI-DTW flight was on a CRJ200, so no first class. $160 for Main Cabin, I think it was around $380 for first class. When I went to "My Trips," I was able to upgrade the the DTW-DFW flight for $92, making the itinerary total $252, and I was booked into first on the only segment that was "firstable." Worked out for me!

I've done this plenty of times. Even before the COVID change fee waivers DL would always waive the change fee if you paid to upfare so you had little to lose by booking Main Cabin at first then seeing if after a day or two you got upfare offers that were less than what the advertised fare for F was. If the buy-up offers were insane but the upfare itself was reasonable, I'd just call and upfare. The only real risk was theoretically the F fare between what you booked and when you finally decided to upfare could go up.

Sometimes too I was unwilling to pay the upfare for the entire way but would be offered a reasonable offer on the leg I really cared about and wanted the upfare (e.g. I'd be flying SEA-DTW-CVG and to buy F the full way or to buy up both legs via the app was expensive but SEA-DTW was at least an offer I would bite on, while for DTW-CVG, I was fine with C+ or just waiting to see if I got the complimentary upgrade but even then didn't care).

I've done it sometimes, although somewhat more before DL decided not to make FCM offers until the 24 hour free cancel period had passed. I always learned to always check the price of FC (DL never charged change fees on upfares) before taking a FCM offer on the app as sometimes it was cheaper to upfare, which also removed the potential ambiguity of whether or not one had a FC ticket for MQM and SDC purposes.

I've always received FCM offers immediately after booking, including recent bookings. Usually it was more than what the fare would be if I simply upfared but it's always been there. What I usually don't receive are buy-up offers that are cheaper than the straight-up upfare until the 24 hour risk free cancel period has passed, but usually I see the buy-up offer drop about 2-3 days after purchase, then it usually becomes a roller-coaster after that where the buy-up offer goes way up then down then up again then down. The game is to see if it ever goes below the dips like what did happen recently. I have a return out of DC for DCA-DTW-SAT. I was able to use an expiring RUC on DTW-SAT. The buy-up on DCA-DTW was initially $181 or 17,000 miles. Then would drop to $119 or about 11,000 miles. Then back up to $181. Then down to $119. Then back up to $181 then back down to $119. Then it dropped to $52 or about 4400 miles. I opted to use 4400 miles just to get into F and then have the empty seat next to me.

I don't think I've ever seen an offer that was cheaper than the original price of first class. :shrug:

For my two common routes (DCA-JFK and JFK-SDQ) the upgrade price is almost always the same: 49 and 109. If I purchase a ticket and for any reason the upgrade costs more than the difference between F and what I paid for coach, and I see that the upgrade chances are low, I change the ticket.

I was flying SDQ-JFK earlier this week, and a few weeks ago I noticed that the front cabin suddenly filled up and there were only 2 seats left, so I grabbed them for 10,900 miles each. I was still curious to know why the cabin filled up overnight, turns out that on Tuesdays there are 4 flights but on Wednesdays there are only 3, so they needed to return the crew back to JFK on the same plane, and all the crew members were in F.

Pre-Covid waivers I did this a fair amount, and now that the waivers in place I do this nearly all the time, unless the first/business fare is already really low.

I sit in coach because I am too cheap to pay for upgrades.

Sometimes I see a good deal and grab it, other times I laugh at the offer because its more than it would've cost me just to buy first straight up at the beginning.

It can also help to stop looking at the prices of FC tickets after you've accepted an offer. Take a good offer and don't hold out for the best possible offer or try to determine whether you could have found a better price later.

I just bought another flight to SDQ and was offered an 89 dollar upgrade and 109 upgrades saved me 100 dollars off the booking price.

11th - 17th of this month.

My "pay to upgrade" on LAX-MCO-LAX is always significantly higher than purchasing F up front. My upcoming flight offer is $385 ow, on a $280 Y ticket. F was $890 I believe. But then again I'm 6/6 this year on free upgrades at the diamond window...all hail the 753!

Having more data to guide future decisions is never a bad thing.

I laugh when it's just absurd, like $1100 or 105,000 miles to buy up to F on GSO-ATL. Yea, that seems like a fantastic deal - lemme jump right on that! :D

Just did this for a trip to MCO in a few days.

Bought Y+ for $190. F at the time I got offered the upgrade was ~$800. I paid $74 each way so $338 for the trip in F, so I saved over $450 bucks.

Of course I had the exit rows on 757s so i had leg room for days if I wouldn't have been able to upgrade, but for 74 bucks a leg i figured what the hell.


I pretty much always go this route now.

To MCO but what origin?

Yeah I always take the exit row, I don't even request the C+ upgrade. But for the extra miles sometimes it's worth the upgrade.

Whoops. ATL

The only issue with the exit row, and why i ended up doing the F upgrade, is if you get stuck in a seat with the IFE in the arm rest. I don't need the extra width but i will certainly take it for 74 bucks.

I always try to avoid these because you lose the value of the upgrade fee if you subsequently have to change the ticket, something you don’t have to worry about if you book it into F properly. But sometimes the difference still makes it worth the risk for me.

I have been successful in changing the ticket and getting rebooked on the same fare class as the upgraded ticket.

I avoid upgrading this way if possible because of this. You can call and make a fuss and speak with a supervisor and probably keep the value, but it's a pain and not guaranteed.

I've never had an issue with losing the value when making a change. Only thing that happens sometimes is the system doesn't track and provide MQM and MQD for the buy-up segment.

I had this happen for the first time last week. All MQMs and original RDM were posted in an entry, and then an additional entry in my miles statement shows: Seat Upgrade: Mileage and MQD with base miles + bonus miles.

The question I have is whether there's any way to be alerted when there's a good pay-to-upgrade deal. :D

I'm looking at a flight I have booked next month. I can upgrade to F for "only" $349 per passenger. But if I change my ticket, the fare difference is $194 per passenger. If I didn't have 5 passengers on my reservation I might actually consider it.... Where are they coming up with this stuff?

I second that I never had issues changing a ticket and losing the value of the upgrade or staying in the same fare class. Even pre covid.

The only time I didn't stay in the same fare class is when it was like a huge change on my part but the entire value of the ticket and the upgrade fee were used for the new ticket purchase and I wasn't charged a change fee.

One suspects that DL does personalized or targeted offers.

Sometimes but not always following the fare being offered for FC compared to the fare you paid indicates the FCM offer you'll see.

It's easy to keep checking the DL app on your phone. You can stay logged in, so you only need a couple taps to view the offer on your itinerary or the seat map for your flight.

Quick question: if you have a multi leg journey, how might one see the offer for each leg? I’ve got a short hop on the first leg that I’m not a fan of upgrading but the second longer leg is where I may consider a cash or points upgrade.

I've never had an issue with the MQM/MQD portions posting. But I've always lost the value of the upgrade when making a change. That said, I'm pretty much always changing routing, dates, destinations, etc. as I'm not a "point A to point B" traveler generally. Maybe if you're changing it for new flights but on the same segments, the agents have some options. If changing to a new route, the value of the upgrade fee disappears when reticketed, every time IME.

I'd look at the cost of simply upfaring the entire ticket or at least all segments in the same direction (outbound vs return). In principle, when you upgrade only one segment, you're breaking the fare, which often is much more expensive. Whether FCM offers for individual segments would reflect this is unclear.

Interesting. Now that I think more about it, the MQM/MQD credit issue occurs when I do an SDC on a ticket that I did the buy-up after purchase. Somehow the buy-up part gets disconnected.

Now, if you want to cancel a ticket that had a buy-up my experience is they issue a credit for the original fare and refund the buy-up. Maybe it wasn't that way previously, but with the current change fee waivers thats what I've seen.

In my case, I don't care about the short DCA-JFK. If the cost of upgrading both is still low, then I go for it for the extra MQM.

On the seat map there should be an upgrade price for just that segment (in both dollars and miles, at one cent per mile).

Our recent CUN-DTW upgrade was only $99 or 9900 miles, and since it was an A330 (lie flat seats), we jumped on it. Outbound the DTW-ATL leg was $588... Yeah no thanks.