Gone are the days of upgrading straight from economy to business class with Delta’s upgrade certificates.
Over the last few weeks, the Atlanta-based carrier has changed the terms for using Global Upgrade Certificates (GUCs) on KLM.
Effective immediately, if you want to use a Global Upgrade Certificate on KLM to sit in business class, you’ll need to purchase a premium economy fare (in the W, S, or A fare class).
For nearly three years, you could upgrade straight from economy to business class on KLM without buying premium economy.
Even after KLM introduced premium economy in 2022, Delta hadn’t updated its upgrade rules until now.
From now on, all KLM upgrades will follow Delta’s one-cabin policy.
So you can go from economy to premium economy or from premium economy to business class — but not directly from economy to business.
And this stings.
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For one, premium economy fares are almost always more expensive than standard economy. That means the buy-up cost to access a business-class upgrade just went up.
The other reason this move stings is that business-class upgrade availability on KLM has historically been excellent.
Upgrades clear into the Z fare class, which is tied to deep-discount paid fares. That means that if KLM is selling a deep-discount business-class fare, you could use a GUC to confirm an upgrade. (This contrasts with business class upgrades on Virgin Atlantic, for instance, which require far less readily available award space for a biz upgrade to clear.)
To be fair, the writing has been on the wall for this change.
Back in 2022, Delta updated its GUC rules across most partners to allow only single-cabin upgrades. But KLM remained an exception, until now.
A Delta spokesperson confirmed the change, telling me that the language “has been updated to align with Delta’s policy across all marketed flights. This was part of a routine review and update to our terms and conditions to ensure consistency.”
In other Delta news, the airline is updating the Choice Benefits available to Platinum and Diamond Medallion members. They’re mostly improving (and there are no other changes to global or regional upgrades).
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Just FYI – while generally true, this is not completely accurate. You can still go from economy to business on KLM flights that are not reconfigured with premium economy (A330). They are still flying these to IAD, MIA, and some others.
Fair point, but then you’re also stuck in 2-2-2 biz. Still better than needing to pay for premium economy.