Manual Mint upgrades
 

My wife (M3) and I (M4) are currently sitting in Mint on our way home from a DCA-JFK-AMS-JFK-DCA itinerary. It seems the automatic Mint upgrade process is broken. We booked separate reservations to simplify the upgrade process. On the outbound JFK-AMS I got an email around T-42 that I wasn’t upgraded due to capacity. One minute later I got an email that I was upgraded. My wife got the capacity email around T-38 but never got the upgrade email. There were still a lot of Mint seats available in the cabin at that point (at least 7 available for sale and 12 open seats on the seat map). I called in and got a lot of BS excuses why she wasn’t upgraded (not all Mint seats are released for upgrades, some Mint upgrades are denied due to weight and balance of the aircraft, etc). After a few callbacks to the Mosaic line I finally got a great agent who recognized the problem and elevated to her supervisor (Kelli). Kelli confirmed there was an IT problem with the automatic system and said there is a manual process to clear upgrades when that happens. She submitted a request to senior management, and about 4 hours later she got approval and was able to clear my wife to Mint.

On the way back, we both got rejection emails at T-28 despite plenty of Mint seats available (at least 7 available for sale and 15 open seats on the seat map). My email was due to capacity and my wife’s was due to “insufficient Mint certificates” (she had 2 remaining in her account). Made no sense that more than 2 certs are required when 2 certs are required, and when we called the Mosaic line the agent was completely unhelpful. Then around T-24 I logged in and saw I was upgraded (no email), but my wife was not. Called again and the agent told me the system requires 3 certs for our itinerary, 2 for AMS-JFK, and one for JFK-DCA despite not offering Mint on the E190. Made no sense so kept calling until I got a great agent who recognized the problem and escalated it to her supervisor. That supervisor manually upgraded my wife after waiting about 20 minutes on the phone.

Just wanted to share that the automatic upgrade process is clearly broken and many front line agents at the Mosaic desk will tell you there’s nothing they can do if you don’t get upgraded when you should. That’s simply not true. There is a manual process and you just need to be persistent calling back to get them to help you. Very glad this process is changing next year, but don’t be surprised if you have issues this month.

IIRC there is no such thing as automatic upgrade process for mint in terms of their IT. It’s literally done manually by someone because if you call they will often look for that agent who processed your flight. It’s pretty insane that this is basically done manually in batches by random agents. That’s why there are tons of issues with upgrades as they have to process a ton of flights with minimal time so often just rush it without checking.

Totally agree with Billy. I am a DL newbie, easily made the challenge, but have had to fight to use 5 out of the 6 mint upgrades - and was able to show the 2nd agent (never the first) that jetblue was wrong, and I was in fact right. I wont bore you with the details of each attempt, but each one was a fight, and in the end I was upgraded on all the routes I was initially not upgraded on.... time will tell in 2024!

Tried finding this on this thread but seeing (seemingly) conflicting info - do you need to actually have an agent manually apply the Move to Mint cert (similar to a RUC) or is it automatically applied for all M3/M4 folks regardless of if you want to use it or not?

What's disappointing is that this is likely a rushed manual process by random agents (as olouie suggests above), but they claim it is an "automatic" process and front-line agents are told to tell Mosaics that there is no way to fix these improper upgrade denials. Thankfully our issues were pretty obvious (e.g., saying there is no capacity when there are 15 open Mint seats), so they were ultimately fixed with persistence. However, I'm sure there are Mosaics losing out on upgrades when they either aren't persistent or it's harder to tell that there was in fact a mistake (e.g., if there was only 1 open seat in Mint it's perfectly reasonable to assume that seat wasn't available when the upgrade process ran). On my AMS-JFK flight I overheard someone complaining her Move to Mint upgrade didn't go through (just like my wife's), when I know there were plenty of seats available at T-24 (and even after the paid upgrades at the gate, there were still 2 empty seats at departure). Sadly, I don't have much hope next year's process will be any easier (although I fully expect it to cost more certs to upgrade than it does now).

It should happen between T-48 and T-24 without any intervention from the Mosaic (unless you call to tell them NOT to use the cert at least T-72 before the flight). But if you don't get upgraded when you should have, then you will need to start calling and hope for an agent who can manually upgrade you.

Another move to mint failure. Booked NYC-SFO flights for a weekday where it seemed like mint was pretty empty. 48 hours and 7 seats open, got a rejection email, 5 seats still open. Called and agents were not willing to help. Said to try at the gate. Of course we all know that is not a good idea. Glad I had a backup flight booked on Delta where my upgrade cleared so I ended up cancelling the jetblue flight. Went out with 3 mint seats open (according to expert flyer). So far I have only had one upgrade work well this year. Will end up wasting the 3 other certificates since the process is so broken. Hopefully this improves next year so I can at least use those.

I know the rules state that the reservation must have been made at least 96 hours prior to departure, but has anyone had success with booking T<96 and still gotten upgraded? I'm assuming it has to be T>48 to made it through the first upgrade sweep. But if this is a manual process, they might be looking at the reservation closely to make sure it was booked at least four days out.

Hello all. I'm an M2 and was considering buying up to M3 for the M2M certs. I'm concerned at what I view is a devaluation. Starting in 2024, we know that the number of certs needed will be dynamic. We don't know how that's going to work. Take JFK-LAX as an example... If the "dynamic price" is 2 certs normally and rarely goes lower, an M3 can only get 1 round trip as their benefit. Not really worth buying the few tiles needed i feel.

This is worrisome for me. Booked a cheap flight thinking I'll get the upgrade but your post gives me zero hope.

For what it's worth - my experience with two JetBlue transcon roundtrips (LAX-JFK, LAX-BOS) since status matching from Delta is that I was Moved to Mint on 3 out of 4 legs with no issues or need to phone in and talk to an agent. It does seem like the process is manual and poor on JetBlue's part, but if you have certificates and there's space available, I'd expect at least a decent chance it will work out for you.

The real problem is that its basically a fully manual process. Usually works, but when it doesnt its up to the customer to try and convince the often clueless reps to fix things. Lots of HUACA required. At the end of the day its a nice perk, but not to be depended upon.

I will say, I was very pleased with my experience. Decided to take the long way to BOS to use my certs by going FLL-SFO-BOS. Cleared both flights at 45 hours prior, and was able to immediately change my wife and I to seat to 2A and 2F on both flights immediately after clearing... can't get much better than that.

If I booked my wife and I from FLL to BOS via SFO she'd have my head on a pike

Haha, yeah I was not too far from that. I am on the second leg now (delayed 2.5 hours thanks to JFK atc traffic management). 1st leg from FLL-SFO this morning, my wife and I were the only ones in the Mint cabin. You want to talk about service? We were both spoiled. 2nd leg I took advantage of the weather waiver to fly to JFK instead of BOS (our final destination). I maintained my mint seat in theory, however something about the change completely hosed my reservation. It refused to give me a boarding pass that matched my confirmed reservation. I finally thought it stuck after I boarded my first flight, but when it came time to board my second flight it kicked me to standard seats. The gate agent was able to force us into the seats but it was weird. So I guess theoretically SDC works, but it might be a major pain in the .... Just an anecdote. Being able to confirm at booking will be nice. Maybe there will even be 1 cert flights on one's like my first flight.

Something about my corporate TA re-issuing my ticket made the "automatic" process skip over me. Took persistence to find a knowledgeable agent who had the authority to process me into one of the still open Mint seats on my flight. The rest had no idea what to do.

That makes 4of4 certs for 2023! We will see if the 2024 process is any better. This is the only issue I've had including with prior tickets issued by my Corp TA.

Update: Snagging a A321NEO mint seat was worth the hassle for a daytime flight. Beautiful space to work with natural sunlight behind me with plenty of elbow space and fast WiFi. I tested the layflat mode briefly and my only complaint is the foot box is quite tight.