Airlines have gotten much better at monetizing their premium cabins over the years, and that comes in a variety of forms, including increasingly selling upgrades for cash as the departure date approaches, much to the chagrin of elite members trying to take advantage of their upgrade perks.
Upgrade costs can be all over the place, and in some cases, they’ve become pretty attractive. However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this before…
In this post:
Delta charges $17.34 for business class upgrade to Asia
A Reddit user shares their experience being offered — and accepting — a $17.34 upgrade from Premium Select (premium economy) to Delta One (business class) on the 15+ hour flight from Atlanta (ATL) to Seoul Incheon (ICN).
As the person explains:
The ticket was changed to the current one on 5-28-26 and flights were LGA (Main B) to ICN via ATL (PS G) and return was HKG (D1 I) to JFK via LAX (D1 I), I being capital i. Upgrade pricing was at $2390.
On 7-13, pricing went north to $2661. It went down to $1812 the next day, the 14th. Some time during the evening on the 14th, I changed the HKG-JFK flight to ICN-JFK via LAX to fly on Korean Air’s 747. That changed the booking codes for return flights to Z while LGA-ATL was repriced to Comfort W and ATL-ICN was repriced to PS A. Upgrade pricing at this time went down to $1671.
It stayed there until this morning at 8:13am, when I went into the seat map for ATL-ICN and saw $17.34. I didn’t cancel out of the screen in case it never returns. Got to the purchase confirmation screen and the charge is also showing on my card.
Currently, I’m about a month and a half out from checking in and flying. I was hunting for the elusive $699 upgrade offer but I’m not complaining at all with $17.34. Book asap, celebrate later.
Was this price the best deal ever, a glitch, or what?
Airlines don’t publish how they come up with their upgrade pricing, though they seem to take into account a massive number of factors. This may include everything from your originally booked fare, to your elite status, to how many seats are remaining and in what fare buckets, to how close to departure it is.
So, was a $17.34 upgrade to Delta One a glitch, or did Delta really mean to offer such an attractive price? On the one hand, originally booked fares may factor into the upgrade cost, and as a result, it’s possible (in theory) that one booked a very expensive premium economy fare, and then the upgrade cost is based on some heavily discounted business class fare.
But what’s more interesting is how the upgrade cost jumps around. It looks like this ticket was changed a couple of times, but then overnight the upgrade cost went from $1,671 to $17.34, so that’s nearly a 99% drop in the cost of the upgrade.
My speculation would be that this was a glitch of some sort, which is to say that the upgrade algorithm sorta broke, and used bad logic. Now, this should of course still be honored, since upgrade pricing is dynamic, and if you want to have a very complicated system, that can go both ways. But as a customer, talk about a huge win!
It’s a good reminder to frequently check upgrade pricing, because you never know what you might find.
Bottom line
A Delta customer was offered a $17.34 upgrade to business class on a flight from Atlanta to Seoul Incheon, which must be some sort of a record. Upgrade costs can jump around. In this case, the upgrade cost went from $1,671 to $17.34 from one minute to the next, a nearly 99% drop!
What do you make of this Delta One upgrade cost? Have you ever seen anything like this before?
Clickbait nonsense. The /r poster never confirmed that the ticket was reissued. Until that occurs there's no upgrade.
Ten bucks says someone is in for a very unwelcome surprise come T-24 when they attempt to checkin.
We've seen under $20 upgrades domestically. So it's not inconceivable that the system somehow produced an under $20 international upgrade.
Pure speculation on my part, but would not surprise me if it was supposed to be $1734 but something broke and somehow I got listed $17.34. Given that it was previously 1600 something dollars, it seems to track but again pure speculation.
Definitely a glitch; huge win for the passenger, IF Delta honors it. If this is all real, I’d’ve kept quiet about it, not shared on Reddit, etc., because, especially if the flight hasn’t happened yet, now Delta may ‘make an example of it’ and ‘fix’ the ‘glitch’ by ‘refunding’ the ‘paid upgrade.’
Was also thinking this. Especially given the fact that OP posted their entire itinerary and changes leading up to this final upgrade
Sharing that much detail, sorta feels like OP wanted 'cred' from the r/delta 'fanboys' more-so than to actually enjoy the upgrade. As a fellow flyer, I hope they actually do get to enjoy it!
Seems easy that DL could run a search for that price point/purchase date on that route and figure out who they sold it to. Damn fools doxxing themselves.
I would not have publicised this (as the Reddit user) until I was on the plane or the offer was revoked, whichever is worse.
They SHOULD honour this, but given how American companies have a habit of not always doing what they should I wouldn't increase the chance of them noticing it.
Incredible deal if it's honoured though
“given how American companies have a habit of not always doing what they should”
*deepest of sighs*