zakran

trying to book JFK to HKG with miles on business for sept 22 and returning 29. looked on delta's website their offering for 240,000 miles, which Im a bit short of. what airline is the best option for me to redeem it on? how would i go about doing that? - sorry for the newbie question

michael_v

You can try searching airfrance.us (need to create an account but don't need any miles in it) for JFK-CAN, CAN-HKG, HKG-CAN, CAN-JFK and then call DL to feed the flights you found to an agent, however there have been reports that DL cannot see some of CZ's availability. You will also incur some fuel surcharges.

There is also an option on 9/23 for low level business all on DL: EWR-MSP-NRT-HKG DL 5719 + DL 121 (or similar routing from LGA but with LGA-MSP in coach) but not much around your return date.

Edit: I even found an option on 9/22 bookable on DL.com: EWR-DTW-ICN-HKG DL 3363 + DL 159 + KE 607. And the return on 9/29: HKG-ICN-SEA-EWR KE 604 + DL 198 + AS 14. 140,000 miles + $101.10. All in first/business class.

zakran

tx! is there anyway to get around the step fuelcharges on airfrance?

michael_v

DL does not impose fuel surcharge on AF flights. If you are talking about the cost shown on af.us, you can ignore that most of the time. If you want to find out the YQ for CZ flights, for example, you can use matrix.itasoftware.com, do a dummy search and at the end it should spell out the fare components, including any YQ/YR. HTH

finny52

I just did a ton of research on DL, KL, AF sites and pieced together an itinerary. The DL agent said that she couldn't get a few of the segments to come back confirmed. I then went onto DL.com, did it myself, and the whole itinerary confirmed in 20 seconds.

Question: How common is it for the website to be able to get seats released when the agent can't? Given how poor DL.dumb is, i'm surprised.

beagleflyer1977

Why don't I see any X availability on KLM from SFO/LAX/SEA - AMS in July 2014/August 2014? X isn't even an option. Has something changed on EF?

view-with-a-room

Please clarify "confirmed". Itinerary booked?

wfu03

I'm trying to find two business seats across the pacific on Korean. I've been successful in finding one on some Korean Air routes, but I haven't found any with two thus far.

Does anyone know how frequently, if you book one award seat, Korean will then subsequently open up another on the same flight to award redemption? If this is a regular occurrence, I could gamble with it, but if it never happens, then maybe I'll look into other options for getting across the ocean.

Denolloyd

As of late, I've mainly seen KE offer 1 seat in J at a time which is similar to your experience. Do you have status with DL? If you are PM or DM, you should be able to book the flight with an open seat and wait for another to potentially open up. If it does not, cancel and try again. In general, when I have seen more than one seat on KE, its been out of the west coast.

luv2ctheworld

It's been stated before in other threads (search for KE awards) but it seems KE may not release more than 1 business seat at any given time to DL.

My personal experience has been that DL may not have access to additional award seats despite KE opening up more. I had a business award seat booked 10 months in advance and looked for the entire time for DL to have another seat available. A week before departure, KE opened up another award seat, but DL did not have access to it. Even 4 hours prior to departure, KE still showed availability, and DL still could not book it.

I wound up taking another award seat on a different carrier to our destination; my wife, who was on the KE award seat, told me when we arrived at our destination that there were at least 2 empty business seats on that flight.

mnredfox

So not exactly searching for LT Business, but using one of the tricks (searching OW first to find availability). Anyway, want to fly SFO-YUL in Y for 25K.

RT search in Sep yields 32.5K RT. OW search yields 40K for the same OB flights that yield 32.5K.

Is this me or is this the DL.dumb award calendar failing again?

michael_v

Use alaskaair.com for low level delta availability

payingdues

I'm looking to fly from South Florida (PBI, FLL, MIA) to FCO on 7/22/15 and return BCN to South Florida on 8/2 or 8/3 2015. I'm PM for 2015 and my girlfriend is FO. I know I can't book just yet, but I'm seeing low award availability up to 7/21. Assuming availability in low opens for 7/22, should I book as one way and then add the return segment when availability opens?

hotelmotel

VA has changed their booking page since I last searched for award availability (to fly VA using DL miles). There's now 5 categories. Which is the one that aligns with what I can book through Delta? (I think it's "Business Reward", but not positive)

Premium Reward
Business Reward
Premium Saver
Premium
Business

jfiander

That's probably the 40k leg. The other direction may be at 25k. Combine them, and you pay (40k/2)+(25k/2)=32.5k