Frozenguy

I’ve been asked by my company to stay an extra day. So I changed my flight to tomorrow evening.

can I book a one way from this airport to my home for the following day or even later tomorrow night as a back up? I HAVE to be home Saturday and god forbid there is a cancelation for mechanical reasons or whatever and I had to fly standby.

so if I confirm a seat and then cancel when I get on my scheduled flight tomorrow, will that upset delta? Will it cause some automatic issue since they are so close? LAX - SFO

Thanks

sydneyracquelle

Don’t add your ff number to the backup flight. You can always add it later for the MQD.

Lyaec350

If you could theoretically make the backup flight (ie arrive sfo, rent car and drive straight back to lax) it’s tough to argue that this isn’t ok. If impossible (ie lax-jfk and 6 hours later another lax-jfk) then obviously a problem. To be extra safe just don’t put ff# on second res.

MCO Flyer

Don’t do it for the same calendar day. You could probably get away with it for the next day.

emma dog

On LAX-SFO, I’d get a backup on UA, AS, or DL. Then you’re also free and clear if there’s a systemic problem for the airline.

LaserSailor

change it to a refundable on your drop dead, and then standby earlier if you can

company foots the fare diff and fees of course.

ATOBTTR

Technically what you are looking to do is against the Contract of Carriage under the "Duplicative Bookings" definition:
Duplicate Bookings
All duplicate bookings generated by a single GDS subscriber are prohibited, including:
Multiple itineraries for any number of passengers with the same passenger name, whether identical itineraries or not
Reserving one or more seats on the same flight or different flights for the same time frame, regardless of the class of service or format used to make the reservations
https://www.delta.com/us/en/legal/bo...cy-definitions
DL's position is that if you end up realizing you need to stay an extra day, you make the change at the time you know and incur the fare difference. This is why airline pricing models are the way they are. Additionally, DL's position would be that you are holding inventory from someone else being able to use on the flight you end up not flying. DL's position is not technically wrong here and you canceling the flight you don't need will return the physical seat but not necessarily the fare bucket back to the inventory pool.

Is DL going to catch you in a one-off and in a scenario where you could with a degree of some reasonableness say you intend to take both flights if questioned? Probably not. That said, if your company needs you to change flights because of work, they should cover the costs anyway of the flight change if there is a fare difference and hey, that's more MQDs and Miles for you anyway. Otherwise you could also just book the "back-up" segment on another airline that operates LA-SF and there's no way for either airline to know you're engaging in duplicate bookings because you aren't engaging in duplicate bookings with a single airline (you are still holding inventory someone else could utilize).

​​​​

sydneyracquelle

Again just don’t put in your Skymiles number in the second reservation. If you end up taking it then you can credit the MQD after.

findark

This. Everything else is just a discussion of whether you can get away with violating the CoC. The rule is quite sensible - if everyone booked backup flights like OP wants, it would be total chaos. It only seems to be subjectively "okay" if you're the only one doing it.

Delta matches on more than just your SkyMiles number; it's not exactly hard to see two pax with identical names and dates of birth.

ATOBTTR

On top of that, too much abuse is going to drive the airlines to bring back change/cancellation fees. It’s been nice not having to deal with those and be able to flex tickets without penalty but this sort of practice is how we see the no change/cancellation penalties reversed.