I understand that booking a TATL BE upgrade with a PMU is the same as booking with miles, i.e. one must have a Y/B/M fare and Z fare available to confirm the upgrade.

When booking an itinerary originating in the U.S., miles are not taken by the phone agent at time of confirmation, but by the GA at the airport. However, when booking a departure originating from Europe, the miles must be available in one's account, and are drawn by the phone agent, at the time Z is confirmed. They will not issue your tickets in Z and will revert you to Y/B/M (losing the confirmed upgrade) if you don't fork over the miles upon booking.

Therefore, when upgrading and confirming Z with a departure originating in Europe, but with a PMU instead of miles, how is this done?

Susan

I upgraded a ATL-DUB leg yesterday, just told the agent that I would be using a PMU cert for the Upgrade, and that was that. Will present the cert to the gate Agent in the BE Lounge at ATL just before the flight. I actually have not got the certs yet. WOuld expect them mid to late February

But my departure point is CPH, not ATL (or another US gateway). When booking an M fare with a confirmed Z upgrade originating in Europe, they require the miles at time of booking (not at check-in). If it's a PMU to be used instead of miles, will they suddenly allow me to wait until check-in to present the PMU but still ticket and confirm my Z itinerary?

I had a huge problem last year when I had called SMS while in the U.S. to confirm a Z upgrade against a purchased M ticket on a CPH-MCO-CPH itinerary. The U.S. SMS agent told me I was confirmed and would just need to have miles deducted at check-in. A few days later, the ticketing office refused to issue the tickets or hold the Z upgrade unless they pulled the miles immediately.

After several phone calls lasting more than two hours total, between U.S. SMS and the Delta European call center / ticketing office, the bottom line was that Z upgrades with points were handled totally differently between the two continents, and there was no budging on either side.

That's why I'm wondering how I would use PMUs when originating in CPH. If I book an M fare and ask them to confirm a Z upgrade at time of booking / ticketing, what will they want from me and when will they want it?

As a new PM, I also won't have the PMUs probably until mid-February, but want to book and confirm an M/Z ticket now while it's available.

Susan

I couldn't agree with you more on this. I was PM from 2002 to 2006 and used the 6 PMU's plus the year end mileage bonus PMU's every year to upgrade my TATL flights to BE. Even the experienced agents in BOS and JFK that did these for me took close to 15 minutes to get it all in the system. They always insisted on collecting both certificates in BOS or JFK and noting it in the record so the return flight could be done right away. They would print me a copy of the record showing the PMU's were collected already for use on the foreign end of the return trip. While this saved me lots of hassle on LGW, MUC, MAN, and DUB return check-ins where the GA's were not DL EE's and had less knowledge of the systems ins and outs. The volume of PMU's must not be enough for DL to care to upgrade the systems to make this easier. Heck, they used to allow you to apply 500 mile upgrades to your travel online, so it's not a technical issue from my view.

Must be a CPH issue. I usually originate my TATL M/B-upgrade-to-Z tickets from Europe as well and have never had a problem redeeming the PMUs or miles on the day of departure; have done this out of FRA, ZRH, AMS, LGW, TXL, NCE, and, while not in Europe, DXB.

dupe post...

Welcome danola to the PM Battlefield.

I'm sure most all PMs will tell you it's very RARE, and much like the frustration and pain in the effort is akin to getting a abcessed tooth pulled without the novocane.

However, I'll wish you lots of luck facing off against all the competition for those RARE upgrades. :eek: