Rapid Travel Chai

Delta announced today a fix to the crap Comfort+ upgrade problem. This is when elites are upgraded from economy aka Main Cabin to slightly better economy aka Comfort+. You can lose a nice exit row and land in a middle seat.

It has been possible to call Delta to manually call Delta to ‘downgrade’ you back from such upgrades. Now you can do this online.

What About Award Tickets?

Except, this only seems to be working with revenue tickets, not award tickets.

This morning I have been testing all my existing reservations. I am a Diamond Medallion, so Comfort+ upgrades clear automatically or as soon as I select upgrade in the reservation.

Only my revenue ones are able to move back to Main Cabin, like this:

As tests, I have been making totally new reservations. No new award tickets have been able to go back once up in on Comfort+, whether selected as automatic upgrade or manual.

Here is a sample seat map at booking:

Same flight booked an award with upgrade auto-processed. I then repeated with another ticket on the same flight, with upgrade manually processed. Both block out Main Cabin.

The Delta announcement makes no mention of this functionality for award tickets, so I don’t know if this is to launch later or not at all. This feature is whole lot less useful if doesn’t apply to certain kinds of tickets (and with no explanation notice on seat maps).

Road Warriors Take Note of Other Changes

Additional new functionality includes the ability to pay for a cash upgrade with different method of payment than the original ticket. This is useful for corporate travelers that are booked in economy and may choose to pay themselves to upgrade.

Wandering Aramean has more coverage.

Readers, what are you finding with today’s Delta changes?