Bewildering Upgrade Pricing On Delta Air Lines

A passenger wonders why he received a “crazy” upgrade offer to business class on an upcoming trip. The answer is quite simple: supply and demand.

Delta Air Lines Upgrade Pricing: There Is Not Necessarily Correlation Between Distance, Product, And Price

A Delta flyer on Reddit wonders why his “upgrade” pricing was so crazy. On the Delta app, he was offered:

$599 or 59,500 miles to upgrade from economy class to Delta One business class from Seoul Incheon (ICN) to Atlanta (ATL)

The 7,152-mile flight is 13 hours, 30 minutes long and operated by an Airbus A350-900 that includes suites with lie-flat beds and closing doors

$1299 or 129,900 miles to upgrade from economy class to first class from Atlanta to Miami (MIA)

The 594-mile flight is 2 hours and is operated by a Boeing 757-200 with recliner chairs

While that may seem bewildering to an occasional flyer, there’s nothing confusing or crazy about it all.

Without even looking at how full the flights are, it becomes clear: the Seoul to Atlanta flight had many unsold seats in the business class cabin that would have remained empty or gone to standby customers. Meanwhile, the Atlanat to Miami was nearly full in the front cabin and Delta was hoping to sell it to someone who was not price sensitive and may have just needed one of the last seats.

There is no correlation between the price of an upgrade and the distance or aircraft type of the flight. We may not fully understand the algorithm, but an upgrade on each flight is dynamically priced according to a number of factors and the result will be cases like this: the sort of upgrade costs that seem crazy.

An upgrade on a flight 6x as long with a lie-flat bed? Sure, it’s a no-brainer. But as Delta looks to maximize revenue, it’s also apparent that it charges what it can for an upgrade and it will charge a lot more for the last premium cabin seat on a short-haul flight than it might for a suite on a longhaul flight that would otherwise go empty.

Ultimately, this is a reminder to keep an eye on the Delta app or delta.com for upgrade pricing…there are still good deals to be had (sadly, not when paying with SkyMiles though…).