rsrik From India, joined Oct 2008, 143 posts, RR: 0 Posted (2 years 11 months 1 week 13 hours ago) and read 3610 times:
I am scheduled to fly Delta (on Y) from JFK - SFO on Tuesday. I have flown on this route about 8 times in the past 2 years, and have been upgraded every single time (God bless DL for that!). However, most of the services on this route appear to have an international flight number, plus, DL has configured the 757s on this route with BusinessElite instead of domestic First. Therefore DL never hands the 5 day/3 day Elite upgrades. They are always at the gate even if BusinessElite is wide open. However, one time I flew from TLV - JFK - SFO. Then, DL upgraded me to BusinessElite from JFK - SFO 5 days before.
Now... I am trying to wrap my brain around DL's elite upgrade policy on this route, and on the Business Elite configured planes:
1. No complimentary elite upgrades (understandable; they would like to sell the J seats while they can). It all happens at the gate.
2. It is also possible that their upgrade process/software excludes these flights because of the international flight num, or because of the BusinessElite configuration
3. It is *probable* that when a passenger is on an international Y itinerary, and is traveling on one of these flights, they do the 5 day/3 day upgrades, but NOT for passengers carrying domestic Y tickets.
Any more thoughts?
At this point, I am very curious to understand this.
rsrik From India, joined Oct 2008, 143 posts, RR: 0 Reply 1, posted (2 years 11 months 1 week 11 hours ago) and read 3592 times:
By the way, 2 additional questions:
1. I am Diamond Medallion, and I fancy my chances for an upgrade day after tomorrow. However, will I boost my chances if I check in ASAP? Does checking in early have any bearing at all on the upgrade list?
2. I checked the available seats on DL's website. There are 7 (Although, there were 11 seats 48 hrs before. They have managed to sell 4 of them). This actually indicates 7 open seats, correct? I mean - there might be some J purchases for which seats are not yet assigned... those will not skew this number, i hope?
sectflyer From United States of America, joined Oct 2008, 359 posts, RR: 0 Reply 2, posted (2 years 11 months 6 days 19 hours ago) and read 3547 times:
Id say as a diamond your chances of an upgrade are great. Im a gold and got upgraded jfk to sfo in feb. I flew atl to bdl the other week and it was considered a business class flight because it originated in the Bahamas. I got the normal upgrade about 5 days out. But I know that the JFK to SFO and LAX are gate only for every elite level.
rsrik From India, joined Oct 2008, 143 posts, RR: 0 Reply 3, posted (2 years 11 months 6 days 14 hours ago) and read 3529 times:
Quoting sectflyer (Reply 2): Id say as a diamond your chances of an upgrade are great.
I sure hope so.
Surprisingly, DL seems to have managed to sell 5 J seats between 12 PM EST and 5:30 EST today !! Great for them, but a bit of an anxiety for me. I chose this route despite having the option of flying via ATL, which would have earned me an upgrade 5 days before the trip
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From India, joined Oct 2008, 143 posts, 
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