DL wants 62K to change BE award travel, but ...
 

I just called DL about a simple change on my return flight home from SVO triggered by a flight # change. I mentioned that I meant to route back through ATL rather than MSP and did't remember how I got it wrong about one week ago.

The DM agent told me it would cost 62K for him to move the last two flights from MSP to ATL. I had already done a dummy booking and knew that I could cancel and rebook for the same amount of my original purchase. (This was already a high BE award ticket.)

I was just curious if this was SOP.

So you already bought a high award ticket? (325,000 miles?)

If so, no more mileage should ever be due, unless your new routing exceeds the MPM for travel between SVO and your home city.

I put out 262,500 to get the routing that I wanted. BE was available at 200K, but I come and go from MSQ and wanted to streamline flights in/out of SVO.

262,500 is Medium one direction and High the other. If your outbound was High and your return was Medium, then it would make sense that they are asking for 62,500 more miles if your desired return flight is only available at High levels (unless you have a schedule change that allows a free rebooking).

However if you're sure you can still book the flights you want for 262,500 if doing a new purchase, then there's no reason the rep should be asking you for more miles.

My mistake was changing the outbound by one day so I will sit on this as in one week I might be able to change this to a paid M/SWU ticket. When I looked last week at paid tickets, I was going to come out better with an S fare than M in terms of routing but the S was $600 more than the M fare but at least was 'only' $3.6K.