Upgrading on ATL-LAX
 

I have just attained Silver Medallion and am planning a trip from IAH to LAX. I am planning on flying thru ATL to log more EQM's and check out ability to upgrade. Per the schedule, all ATL-LAX flights are 767's albeit different versions (762, 763, 764). I've searched the forums pretty thoroughly and have learned that HOU-ATL hold good possibilities for upgrades for even lowly Silvers.

Does anyone have any guidance on better odds of upgrading from ATL-LAX? I've checked seat guru at some 767's have 18 F's whereas others have 30+. Is it as simple as choosing a flight with more F's? If so, are there online tools that exist that show exactly which version of 767 is being used? Are there better times of day that might net a better chance of an upgrade?

Thanks in advance for any perspective ...

You can look at delta.com and pretend you are booking a first class ticket for your desired flights. The seat map will come up in the list of available flights. You should be able to not only determine what type of aircraft it is but also how may seats in F have already been booked.

To better your chances of an upgrade, you can purchase a higher fare class. To guarantee your F seat, you can purchase an A fare, if offered in your market, which will get you 1.5 MQMs as well.

For the 4,207th time, seatmaps are not a reliable indicator of how many seats are booked.

Deleted

So seat maps are not accurate regarding how full F is, but they are accurate for the total number of F seats - yes?

Yes, unless there is an equiptment change.

Especially on Saturdays

I also am flying ATL-LAX soon. I have been checking availability thru a different site: http://www.flyaow.com/classcwt.htm .
This site tells you how many first seats are available, Everything to the left of Y is premium cabin. I check the flights on the day I am traveling. IE. I am leaving on a friday so, this friday I will check the flights. I hope it works!
Steven
Can anybody shine some light on accual percentage of upgrades recieved on the ATL-LAX route?

Another easy way to know what equipment is scheduled to be used for a given flight is to look at the flight schedule pdf available for download from www.delta.com. The configuration of any given type of a/c can be found on www.seatguru.com. For availability, the DL site is a starting indicator. The flyaow site is good too, but neither indicate award/upgrade availability, only the number of assigned confirmed seats.

An easier way to look up DL seatmaps is to go here:

http://www.benedelman.org/travel/dlseats/

It's much easier than going through the whole purchase procedure to see what the seatmap looks like in FC.

As others have aggressively pointed out, seatmaps alone are not a reliable indicator of how many seats are left, but there is one (limited) trick I use to get some idea. I pretend to be booking the maximum number of first class seats allowed by delta.com (I think it's 7). When the website shows flight options, those flights that do not have that many seats available anymore will offer only coach seats for sale. Any flight that shows first class options, has at least 7 seats for sale, and presumably available. One can narrow down how many seats are actually available by decreasing your "attempted" purchase from 7 to 6 etc.

In my experience this is a pretty reliable way to figure out how many open FC seats are left on a flight. Those seats are eventually released if not sold, but sometimes not until the last minute. This method has been particularly effective when, even though I am a PM, I am not upgraded ahead of time even though there are seats showing on the seatmaps as available. With this technique, I gain greater assurance of whether or not the chances are good that I will prevail in the gate lottery. My predictions have been very good using this technique.

Casimir

Many thanks!
 

Thanks for all of the helpful perspective. I am anxious to try these tools and techniques and hopefully secure an upgrade.

Very much appreciated!

RPRocket