Rapid Travel Chai

In May Delta adjusted and published its upgrade priority, vaulting elite status to the top:

1. Medallion Status*
2. Fare Class Groupings
3. Delta Reserve Credit Card Members
4. Delta Corporate Travelers
5. Card Members who earned the Medallion Qualification Dollars (MQD) Waiver in the current calendar year
6. Date and time of upgrade request

This is beneficial to my low fare class status travels with my Diamond Medallion status.

In the mix are also the Comfort+ fake upgrades. Today I encountered another pitfall: splitting the PNR (separate the reservation into individual records for each passenger).

Companion upgrades at highest status are coming in the fall. Until then, a lower status passenger drags down all on the reservation. More passengers on a ticket require more seats as well.

My wife and I have a trip this weekend where we both were already in Comfort+ from booking earlier this year, prior to treatment of them as separate fare class upgrades. Today we got notice emails that we have been upgraded to the seats we already had. I then realized I had not split the PNR. We are both Diamond Medallion, though will take upgrades one at a time to increase chances for her getting up front (her seat or mine!). Our flight only has one first class seat for sale. Talking to the determined agent who tried several things, once a ticket receives the Comfort+ ‘upgrade,’ the only way to split the PNR is to downgrade the ticket to economy and potentially lose the seats to auto-assignment of other passengers. Grrr.

Maybe at the departure gate the agent will be able to override the system.

*Million Miler status apparently counts for nothing, to my surprise, in checking with Rene’s Points. Delta only provides confirmation by omission.