How Many Early Birds Are There?

not hard to imagine not being full considering the flight is from a big market New York and Rome is extremely popular destination; there are possibly all kinds stuff going on (business travel, conventions, etc.) in Rome that you don't know about at that time; the price always goes up with demand and scarcity;

It could be, but also be aware that Delta updates their website on Saturdays, which can lead to odd things being seen--I've seen entire seat maps blacked out that magically opened up again later. Check back Monday (or later) to see if it's any different.

Can't help you with the Delta v. American question. I know I like Delta better than United.

Edit to add: Just read a post over on FlyerTalk talking about an October Delta reservation that changed today, so perhaps they are doing some changes to the October itinerary you're following as well.

I found something similar when booking flights to Prague yesterday on Norwegian. Nearly all seats in their Business class were gone as were nearly all exit row and bulkhead seats and this was for flights in early October.

Well you are looking at premium economy and there aren't that many seats to begin with. October is convention time and everyone is trying to grab premium economy seats these days, at least from what I have noticed on this forum.

I've flown both Delta and AA to/from Italy. They both have their good and bad points, and I know some people value certain aspects of flight more than others. So here's my experience with the two airlines.

Seats - AA is slightly more comfortable in Business, Delta has more comfortable enhanced coach seats , and AA seems to feel better in regular coach. (Note: I am short. A taller person might not agree with any of these assessments.)

Meals - I think they both serve decent, in-flight food.

Flight change issues: Both airlines can have last minute issues, whether it's a time change, equipment swap or delay at the airport. I find Delta to be remarkably better at dealing with these.

So generally for me, Delta has the slight edge. On any given day, that experience could entirely flip to AA's favor because stuff happens when you travel. But that's my overall impression.

As far as booking the seats go, wait and check again on Monday. As somebody else pointed out, Delta tends to do IT stuff on Saturdays. But I find it perfectly plausible that that route is already filling up.

x2 that Delta schedule change Saturday can make things get a bit weird with the seat maps. It's also common for the airline to block a fair number of seats from seat assignment until right before departure- they'll set aside certain seats, typically the bulkhead ones, in case there are physically disabled persons or persons traveling with infants, and may have other seating areas blocked if they anticipate group bookings for the flight.

There's a web site called ExpertFlyer.com that lets people check actual fare bucket inventories and current seat assignments and blocked seats for specific flights. You can either pay $4.99 for a month's access to poke around yourself to see what the flight status is or find someone else who pays for the site (note- not me; I do NOT have a subscription there) and ask them to do the search on current assigned and blocked seats for you.

I prefer Delta and their Sky Team partners to the other US legacies. They're not perfect but seem willing to try harder to fix things when a problem happens.

I bought tickets for it Spain trip last month. Had watched airfare for a few weeks and it was about 1100 while watching. On January 2 it was 850 so grabbed it then. I figure anything under 1000 ST from the West Coast is a deal.

In my experience so far, Delta has been much better than American for comfort. Now, I've only flown Delta for domestic flights, but almost all my American flights have been uncomfortable, including one last year to Italy that was booked through BA that was hot and stuffy with no adjustable air vents, no individual seat back entertainment, and smaller than typical seats - it was the most uncomfortable flight of our lives so far. We just booked our flights on Delta to Berlin for September, so we will be trying out their international flights. Through Google flights, we found Delta flights for $900 a person if we booked through KLM that were $1700 for the same flight if booked through Delta. Weird business practices, but we scooped up the cheap tickets with their partner for the same flight, so worked for us!

Thank you so much for the helpful comments.
I got an email alert this morning that the price dropped. Now about $50 higher than the lowest since the tickets were released.

Because my heart was set on that particular ticket set (landing in Milan before 9 am, not leaving Rome before 11am, etc) I went ahead and bought the tickets. On the long haul flights there were 2 seat choices that met my criteria on the way over and on the way back only one. I didn't want to pay for premium economy and sit in a middle seat.

Another interesting thing is that my capital one card denied the purchase due to unusual activity so I used another card with less rewards. I called capital one and they gave me the 1.5% back for my trouble.

My husband and I just purchased our flights to Stuttgart for Sept. We have been watching flights since Sept 2017, and since we want to fly direct non stop we are limited on our airlines, flights, Etc.
We went to Seatguru.com and entered the type of plane from the flight we wanted and it tells you what seats are better than others. Then we at least got to choose our seats....NOT by the restrooms or galley.
As for being an early bird in purchasing our tickets, maybe but at least we will have the most expensive part of our trip Paid for By the time we leave!

I also like spreading out the payments. Pre paying for tickets, hotels etc decreases the financial hit at trip time.