Were your Delta upgrades impacted by yesterday’s APP & Website IT issues? What happened to us!

Monday, March 6, 2017 – A Guest Post from John (@laptoptravel)

Did you notice this IT issue with the Fly Delta App and Delta.com yesterday? Well, whether you noticed it or not, Delta had yet another (but much smaller) IT problem.  Around noon EST, Delta lost its website and mobile applications.  Customers were not able to check-in online, search for flights or access anything Delta.com related.  The same thing happened when trying to use FlyDelta, Delta’s mobile application.

I was told by Delta that “IT is undergoing maintenance to restore links.” Why they lost those links no one knows. Another source at Delta told me that there was an attempt to introduce some new software ‘updates’ and things got ‘hung up’ for a bit.

Regardless of what Delta was attempting to do it may have affected your flights in unintended negative ways. Take it from my own experience, and documented along the way sort of by accident.

Having blogged about a meet up with readers in Dallas and give some the opportunity to go on a mileage run, René had planned to fly in early and meet up at the Centurion Lounge in the DFW airport and then off to HardEight BBQ next with those arriving the day before the run today on Tuesday.

It seems that due to the Air France strike issues, René’s flight from Atlanta to Dallas was oversold by 7 and he walked away with a $1,000 “bumpertunity” from Delta. Meanwhile, I had arrived in Dallas earlier along with a few flyers.

In preparation for the Mileage Run, I had been capturing screenshots and sharing data on our group’s upgrade possibility and flight loads. Prior to the IT malfunction, René and I were #1 and #2 on a specific segment. There were 4 seats unassigned in the first class cabin and after check-in we could see that those seats were open. Two other people in our same group were #3 and #4 on the same upgrade list.

However, after Delta processed the day’s upgrade clearances #3 person got a first class assignment and #4 also got an upgrade.  René, and myself stayed at #1 and #2, respectively. Knowing when people had purchased their tickets and their Medallion status both René and I knew that an error had occurred in the processing of first class upgrades.

In addition to the miscue in the upgrades a notice appeared on my seatmap as I looked to see what seats were open on the flight. Delta placed the following notice on my seatmap:

It reads:

“Advisory Message: We can’t assign a seat because one or more passengers in this itinerary is on the standby list for a seat assignment. If you have an assigned seat and need to change it, please see an airport agent when you check in.”

Well, I had an assigned seat and I am traveling alone so this makes no sense.  It may also be a part of Delta’s IT system problems which led to my upgrade being passed over. I do not have an explanation for René, but he was not looking on a PC as I was doing; he was simply using the mobile app.

I did call Delta and they saw that there had been an error, but without explanation.  A ‘hiccup’ is how I believe the agent referenced it.  Hopefully my status can be cleared up with the gate agent to keep me in the queue for proper upgrade processing.

So, just a quick word of advice to check your own upcoming flights the next few days to make sure you do not have the same ‘Advisory Message’ placed on your flights and keep an eye on the upgrade lists and your own progress.

Did you notice anything strange or unexplained happen with your flights either yesterday or today? Please let us know in the comments; more data points are always appreciated. – Happy Jet Trails…..John @laptoptravel

Thanks John for this guest post and for keeping up with the issues yesterday while I was in the air on my CRJ200 flight down to ATL. Scary when Delta IT issues can impact the integrity of the upgrade process like this. At least (said while I roll my eyes) the integrity of the FCM up-sell at check-in was working well this morning! – René