heckler

My question is this:

We all know this year DL was very stingy w/upgrades, holding back seats for paying customers - fair enough from a business perspective, but with no rhyme or reason. DL would usually tell you that they only had "x" number of upgrades available per flight.

Therefore, isn't the big hoorah about unlimited upgrades a bit deceiving, as DL will still only offer a few seats on each flight to upgrade to? Also to be addressed is exactly when DL's revenue unit determines when they can no longer "sell" a seat , and gives the empty ones up for upgraders.

If there's oodles of people wanting to upgrade, but not enough seats, then "where's the beef?"

Bottom line: lots of talk of unlimited upgrades, but not alot of technical talk about the availability of these upgrades in order to get your behind into FC..

Am I off course here??

[This message has been edited by heckler (edited Dec 18, 2003).]

gilpin

I have a related question. Note that on the new webpage describing unlimited upgrades there is a footnote under each category:

1 Available on all published upgradable fares.

Do you suppose that means that certain fare will still be non-upgradable based on specific fare rules rather than just fare basis code? If they had just wanted to exclude unpublished fares why add "upgradable" to the disclaimer?

jjglaze77

I think that is just to clarify that all N class tickets are still not valid. Also what about the S fare bucket? Not sure what that one is, but have seen it some... Anyways... YBM-HQK-LUT are listed on all the confirmation window charts...


I agree that "unlimited" sounds very good, and I also agree that we should be wary, but most importantly, I think that we should realize that this is NOT an "industry-leading" change. DL is no thte first to implement this change... Perhaps the people over at CO/NW aren't completely satisfied, but overall it seems they are OK... This is just a new deal, and with all the who-hah DL has put us through this year, it's OK to be cynical, but I think it will work out... or have I taken DL's bait? We'll soon see.

Incidentally, I called SMS to see if I could go ahead and get on the upgrade list for flights after 1/1/04, and he said this would be his first time trying it. He tried, and it was a no go, so he said I would have to call on 1/1/04 as that was when the new system would start. I assured him I wasn't complaining and mentioned what a shock the e-mail from Ms. Miles was. He just went on for about 2 minutes as to how much easier it would be... lolol, he was like, "finally, treating customers the way they should be treated!" lololol... hooray!

indufan

This also gives them an out to create a new class that is below T that might not be upgradeable.

NoStressHere

They MIGHT hold back the advance upgrades, but they have almost always filled those seats at the gate. So, I don't see them holding back in the end. Waitlists will become even more regular is all.