honestly I think everything overall would be better if medallion upgrades (and the equivalent on UA/AA) just went away completely. And I say this as someone who buys up front occasionally but not exclusively (probably half of my flights are paid F).

Im sorry, sir. These are fighting words! The value of the program is significantly diminished without the illusion of upgrades,

Same here. (Second year DM)
I'm DCA based. (Non-DL hub). I have a very good upgrade percentage this year (including through ATL). I used my GUC for D1 to Spain and Lima, Peru. I've also successfully used my RUC's as well.
You have to be flexible, creative and not be hub captive. (or 2 of the three)

DM is great for IROPS, C+ at booking, bags, Medallion line.

My husband reacts the same way:
- On KLM he eats and drinks in the lounge, sits in his extra legroom seat, and thinks KLM is great.
- On DL he also eats and drinks in the lounge (technically due to AMEX) and sits in his extra legroom seat, but just because he see's his name always on the upgrade list but almost never making it he thinks Delta is useless.

It certainly isn't rational, but that's life!

I have to disagree with this part. My boss is DM, I'm FO now, will be PM by end of the year. He usually books both of our tickets together, same resi. We're ATL based. I've been upgraded to F to MIA, SJC, DFW, TUL, and PHL. But routing through MSP or SLC for connections, nope. It's the big Hub to Hub routes and the biggest business routes where it's hardest to get upgraded. On other routes, you've got a good chance. Most of our upgrades are well in advance of DoD.

This is absolutely correct. In the days when DL was only selling a fraction of their F seats and SDC was robust and allowed you to switch to any routing, I ran upgrade rates pretty close to 100%. No chance of doing that now unless you're flying to/from a small airport without much of an elite population.

However, the pandemic changed behavior. There's less business travel now and more leisure travelers are willing to buy premium cabin tickets.

There was certainly a wave of premium cabin purchases once people began traveling again and had both a build up of cash and the desire to travel, but DL made its intentions with respect to FCM and selling more F seats clear even before the pandemic. Since the pandemic, DL has just continued to get more aggressive with with its FCM efforts to monetize premium cabin seats. Other airlines are following suit - my comp UG percentage as an EXP on AA isn't overly impressive for the times I haven't bought up.

I would say that DM is far from useless. The C+ at booking is a huge benefit for the extra legroom, as well as the choice benefits.
Some things have been significantly eroded over the years, such as removal of SC access/membership unless you burn multiple picks for a exec membership... and also the fact that DL has gotten quite good at selling F seats right up to day of departure.

There are certainly a lot less upgrades being handed out, as well as more seats being held back for DL to try to sell them inside the T-5d period instead of processing upgrades.

If DL has reasonable upgrade offers then I bite on them also... but plenty of times I didn't take the overpriced offer and ended up 1/xx on the upgrade list for 0 seats... so they are finding suckers to give them a pile of cash to sit up front.

To elaborate, we're also still "working off" the pile of long-term Diamonds from the pandemic. Given another year or two that should die back a bit.

I'm a bit torn on the "battleground upgrade" versus "advance upgrade" policy. The former is good for SDCs while the latter is good for status upgrades. Then again, I'm also someone who would prefer to just get more RUCs/GUCs and pay up the rest of the time.

I do think we're all hopeful that the data from those F-heavy planes (the ones where they couldn't get the lie-flat seats approved so they just threw in a ton of F seats) will nudge them to add another row or two of F on more of their fleet.

I think people massively overestimate this. There just aren't that many people who had huge piles of MQMs, and of those people, most of them are still flying enough to earn DM organically.

I think you're using "battlegound upgrade" here to mean "gate upgrade" (generally I use "battlefield" to mean "the GA comes on board to upgrade someone who has already boarded because someone no-showed") but in any case, I don't see how window upgrades are "good for status upgrades"? Like, if it goes to the gate, DMs are still at the top of the heap. All the window does in this case is punish people who buy last-minute expensive fares (in addition to depleting inventory that could be used for SDC/IROPs). I'm open to arguments here but I just don't see anything compelling about getting upgraded five days out (tbh this probably negatively affects FCM rates as well).

Absolutely. Most of my flights go to the gate with zero FC seats available so nobody gets upgraded unless there is a no show.

Although half of the time when there is a no show, the GA can’t be bothered to upgrade anybody.

:(

David

expiring DMs
 

As always, upgrade availability improves somewhat after January 31, when some Diamonds' status expires.

Yes, more people are willing to pay for the first class seats, especially infrequent travelers for whom a trip is a major event not a routine.

However, I don’t believe that passengers with extra budgets would take 6 a.m. flights of fly out of Vegas on a Friday night.

Convenient rush hour flights populated by business travelers will always have million milers and paid customers ahead of you

Basically, if you're getting upgraded at T-120? That's good for you if you're relying on your status. If they're holding upgrades until day-of-travel (or even at-the-gate), that's better for folks trying to work SDCs (DL upgrading down to only one seat remaining in F sucks for SDCs).

That being said, at this moment I will give DL a bit of a pass on being stingy with advance upgrades for the next little bit because of the shutdown - if they suddenly lose capacity because ATC is understaffed due to that, I understand DL wanting to make sure they can slide paid F pax onto other flights in paid F (not to mention, not wanting to have to pull a bunch of folks from F and "replace" them because a bunch of inbound flights got stuck). That happens in e.g. "normal" WX situations, yeah, but I cannot imagine DL wanting to court that sort of hassle right now if they can help it.