htkatch

A friend of mine and I are flying together. He had someone attached to his reservation, I did not.
The upgrade priority is (in Order):

1) Medallion Status
2) Fare Class
3) reserve card holder
4) Corporate traveler
5) if you earned MQM waiver
6) Million Miler status
7) Date and time of request

We have all the same for 1 through 3 but i am a corporate traveler and he is not. He and his companion were upgraded, i was not and there are no more seats left.

I've called Delta and they cant explain why this happened.

Anyone else have a similar issue ???

LikeaGVI

First I want to say I can’t even imagine how frustrating this was for you. I can only hope it wasn’t a longer flight (2+ hours). While this won’t help you - DL’s IT and operations are a disaster. They’ve gone from setting the bar and leading the pack, to this new LCC/Full Service carrier hybrid and there’s no sign they have any interest in changing that.

You pay for a premium cabin seat (F or J) get ready for an incredibly disappointing experience. You *might* have a mini bottle of water at your seat, but likely not. You will not get any PDB. After takeoff you *might* get lucky and get a FA that does a few beverage and snack basket runs. Others do 1 and then sit the rest of the flight unless you summon them by ringing the call button.

Conversely, AA & UA are back to PDB’s and service pretty much as normal sans still wearing and enforcing masks (which I realize is outside of their control).

TLDR; Delta is not the Delta we knew from the 2010’s to mid-2021.

UnevenGray

Are you on a corporate ticket for this specific reservation?

atyppo

Did you have rollover status but he did not? Those with rollover are behind those with earned status in each respective tier. Are you sure that your fare class was exactly the same? AFAIK, Delta has not clarified exactly which classes go ahead of others. And IIRC, the corporate traveler bit only comes into effect if you're traveling for business. These are top of mind for reasons he may have been upgraded before you. Also, did you board before him? Might have been a lazy gate agent that just looked for next person that hadn't boarded on upgrade list.

LikeaGVI

Why would corporate/business travelers book leisure vacations on their corporate travel platform or account? And if they did - how would Delta know if they were traveling for business or vacation?

htkatch

yes

hi55us

Yeah I feel like the upgrade system is a little bit wonky right now to. Flying SEA-LAX tomorrow and F was wide open at the 5 day window, 8 seats available. Thought there would be a chance I get upgraded at the 5 day window but I didn't. 3 day window comes and 1 seat goes away, down to 7, where it stayed. Then last night 6 seats get given out in F, despite C+ being empty. No idea if the 6 seats where actually sold, but it seemed suspicious.

htkatch

we booked tickets at around the same time the same fare class and price. I had earned Diamond, just as he did.

I will tell you, I also earned executive platinum on AA last year as well and i have a 95% upgrade rate. What is better is that when i call the EP line, they actually answer the phone. I have come to the realization that it is probably cheaper to pay for first class instead of spending the 250K a year on the Delta card and then having those miles devalued. i ended last year (due to rollover) with 325K MQM and this is how they treat a "Diamond"

htkatch

I agree. with your assessment

htkatch

I doubled checked my PNR at pnr.sh/delta and my corporate flag was in the system

atyppo

Unless OP was traveling on business account, corporate traveler status doesn't come into effect according to their website. And yes, obviously DL wouldn't know whether they were traveling for biz or vacation if booked as business.

atyppo

Odd then, I can't explain. Maybe an email to Karen Zachary might catch the right set of eyes and provide an explanation (and ~15k SkyPesos). DL email format is [email protected].

Goodoldflyer

Your friend is also a "diamond". Maybe he got points for bringing a guest.

Or maybe they deducted some disloyalty points for your executive platinum on AA.

One misstep and you're looking at other programs. Just sayin'.

hotshot265

Yes I agree with you on 100% of this. I am also EXP on AA and that is because the last 9-months or so I have been migrating my travel, as well as my customer travel, over to AA. While AA has it's problems, from a customer service perspective, they are far and away better than Delta has been in the last year. I am actually on only my 3rd Delta segment right now so far this calendar year, compared to 20 or so on AA. My biggest reasons for making the switch are 1) the EXP line gets picked up in a matter of a few minutes, unless there is a major system issue like weather; 2) When traveling with my customers, I can get them MCE seats, no matter how many are on the reservation; 3) When flying first, I am usually in paid first, so AA has at least brought the front cabin service back to a much better standard than Delta and 4) pricing in the past 60-days on Delta has been outrageous for the service they are providing.

I know this is an upgrade thread, but I had to spend almost 4-hours on the phone with Diamond desk and then the reissue desk about a month or 6-weeks ago trying to get GUC's applied and re-ticketed for a South Africa trip in November.

Robert Leach

The entire process for applying a GUC/RUC is a hot mess. It always has been to some extent, but with the consistently slow phone times and the rampant poor training of agents regarding the new RUC/GUC rules, it has gotten even worse.