Time of day for upgrade processing
 

When do upgrades process during the upgrade window? Meaning, is there a specific time every day?

They used to clear starting around 5PM Eastern the day before your window opened, but it's been a number of years since that's been the case. They now should clear when your upgrade window opens for the flight if there is upgrade inventory and no one is ahead of you.

I just checked at T-120. If I'm able to be upgraded, the F seats should be open to choose for free. The 'you've been upgraded' email will arrive a few hours later.

It will process it automatically a few mins later as well. Sounds like you happened to check your reservation after the space opened up but just before the auto sweep run in which case you were able to process the upgrade in seat-map yourself for free.

Sometimes the upgrades go up a few minutes before T-120 hours; sometimes right on the hour or a few minutes after. I just got upgraded for a CHO-ATL segment on Friday 4/23 a few minutes after the 120 hour window opened. On my connecting segment to DAB, DL upgraded two pax into F right on the 120 hour window opening (unfortunately, not me).

I have found, especially with C+ upgrades at booking, often the UG is available for you to select the new seat before you get the email. Meaning, I buy a Y ticket. Complete the purchase and then go back in and select C+ seats. I'll get the email an hour or so later. I've found F upgrades work similar, where if I check at my window I can sometimes select the F seat and then the email comes. However, the big key is open inventory.

It doesn't happen at a certain time of the day. It is connected to the time of day of the flight itself. If you are Gold, for example, it will be 72 hours before your flight.

In the 5 pm ATL time era, upgrades that didn't clear at the DM window would often clear a couple days later in the middle of the night. I don't know whether it was a case of inventory opening at that time or not, but DL seemed to regularly run a sweep at about 3-4 am ATL time.

I typically fly JFK-LAX at least once a month on a saturday morning and return sunday morning. On the JFK-LAX route, my Delta One upgrades (if I get them), tend to clear around 1:30am-3am for a 7am departure. If I take the LAX-JFK redeye back on a saturday, upgrades tend to clear around 3pm, day of departure. If I depart on a sunday morning LAX-JFK, it usually clears 2am-3am day of departure. Of course this all depends on if there's many medallion members on my flights.

If the upgrade is going to process when the window opens, it usually processes within an hour of the window opening (never precisely at the time the window opens, because I check). More and more though it seems there is little rhyme or reason as to when or why they process. I got an upgrade not too long ago at the window where they filled the F cabin to all but 1 seat at T-120. For my upcoming flight in 3 days, no upgrades have processed and 12/12 seats are available in F:rolleyes:

Yeah sometimes the RM OU/OY algorithms make no sense. I applied a RUC to a ATL-HNL and HNL-ATL flight I’m taking in a few weeks and my outbound cleared about a week after I applied it and there were only 15 seats left at the time it cleared, yet my return still hasn’t cleared even though there are 24 seats left and I’m flying back on a midweek Wednesday flight? :confused: Also since I booked the return flight, the # of available seats in D1 has only increased from 21 to 24.