Delta is Selling $27 Upgrades to First Class(!?)

Depending on where and when you shop, twenty-seven bucks may or may not get you some bang for your buck.

But that was the price tag for a First Class upgrade on my Delta Air Lines flight — this week!

How Much to Upgrade to First Class?

I was scheduled to fly between Los Angeles (LAX) and Las Vegas (LAS) on Tuesday. Just a quick day trip for a special event.

I used 20,000-ish SkyMiles to purchase the Main Cabin (coach) roundtrip airfare (and $11.60 for fees). I was fine with an exit row to and from Vegas. I requested a complimentary upgrade to First Class as a perk of my Delta SkyMiles Medallion® elite status.

My upgrade window opens 120 hours (or exactly five days) before a booked flight’s departure. So, I was eligible for upgrades starting at 7:00 AM (or whatever it was) for my Tuesday 7:00 AM-ish flight to Las Vegas.

Despite about 80% of the First Class cabin being open, I wasn’t yet upgraded. Hey, Delta’s a business, not a charity. I get it!

Plus, wheels-up to wheels-down between L.A. and Vegas is about 50 minutes. Upgrades are always nice. But I’ve taken about 50 or 60 Southwest flights between the two cities and managed just fine.

Two days later — now about 70 hours before my flight — I checked again. Upgrades weren’t cleared for either flight — and plenty of First Class seats remained open.

I tapped a First Class seat on my LAX to LAS flight to see if maybe I had been upgraded in the system but not assigned a seat. (Delta IT, you know.)

A window popped up:

I laughed. Delta was trying to squeeze $26.88 out of me for my First Class upgrade.

Bet you’ll never guess what the upgrade cost was on the return.

I laughed. I guess Delta needs the money and is passing around the collection plate, huh?

I didn’t bite on either. (The day before the flight, they were up to $134 with only a few seats left.) I’m on month 13 of “I’m-Giving-Up-Alcohol-for-a-Month,” so the booze isn’t a selling point. I love the extra space, especially when I need to get work done. But, again, they’re short flights. (I ended up canceling the trip at the last minute. My wife is under the weather and I was blessed with a ton of photo editing and voiceover work.)

Loyalty: Worth $27?

All of this goes back to something René deLambert‘s written about before (most recently, this post). And just a couple of days ago, reader Leo commented:

I just qualified for Diamond, and it’s painful to see first class seats being sold for almost nothing while I’m waiting to be upgraded. It really makes you wonder whether status is still worth it.

Is status worth it? It depends on the person and their situation (budget, home airport, etc). This “buy our upgrades for $27!” seems a little cheap on Delta’s part. But they also just made net positive (I think) changes to Platinum and Diamond Choice Benefits.

Maybe the perk of status is getting discounted, targeted upgrades through AI.

What’s your take?