Delta really needs to fix its automated system. Logged into my email this morning to see I was upgraded on a flight that was scheduled 1 day later (Monday) than I was supposed to fly home (tomorrow/Sunday). If I had not received that email I had no other notification that my flight was cancelled. And yes I have all notifications turned on for my DL app. To add insult to injury I called DM line and there were still available seats on a flight 2 hours earlier than my original scheduled flight. So instead of automatically placing me on that flight, DL�s computer decided it would be better to delay us for an entire day and have us fly out the next day. Face palm.

Beyond my rant I do have a couple questions. Is there anything I can do on my end to help with cancellation notifications? I double checked my email and my app settings.

Also, we booked main cabin but now of course are scattered in middle seats in the back. Is it worth emailing delta or should I just let that go? If I had known I would be in a middle seat and split up I would have booked basic economy and saved some expense.

I think this is rational. If you arrive at the airport and find that your flight has been cancelled, you have no way of going back two hours in time and getting on that earlier flight. Maybe there is some clever AI that could figure out that you can reschedule your day, but when you called the DM line you were using human intelligence to solve this problem.

you make a great point. I think my greatest annoyance here is that I am over 24 hours out from my originally booked flight and received no notification of the cancellation. My wife and SIL are on separate PNRs and have yet to receive notifications that their flight was cancelled. It�s difficult to use human intelligence when the customer isn�t even aware of the change.

For reasons unknown to me, DL rarely sends change/cancellation notifications. Best thing is just to check on your itineraries every week or two, and look for changes.
Try to get to the gate a bit early and tell the gate agent that you are all spread out because of a schedule change. Usually a couple of rows are reserved for gate assignment, the gate agent can access these seats

There are always 2 C+ seats saved for gate agents.

I agree that if your flight is cancelled, a notification would be nice. That said, you can always check your own flight information, as minor changes (and major ones, these days) are happening all the time.

I would always use another service, like Tripit or Awardwallet to also manage/monitor your flights. You'll be notified by them too.

At this point, I think their systems just can't keep up with all the changes.

I completely agree that no notification is unacceptable.

However regarding the algorithm, if they put someone on an earlier flight you can bet there would be a post here complaining about that. "How am I supposed to get to the airport 2 hours early, then I would miss my meeting and that defeats the point of my trip."

There is no telling whose plans are flexible in which direction in time. Some people need all the time they can get before their flight, some need that time after. Heck it could even be the same person wanting different preferences on the outbound and return of their journey.

Setting up a preference on each direction of the journey, is the only way around that. For example in the event of the cancelation like would you prefer an earlier or later flight, and then how much earlier before you don't want that earlier flight, 2 hours, 4, 8?

My point is your judgment of the algorithm as painful is purely based on your own preferences and situation. When it actually has little to do with the quality of the algorithm.

The next step could be that you specify a couple of preferred alternate flights. Given how many flights are being canceled, it wouldn�t be a bad feature to have in place.