charms81

Need some advice from fellow fters.

I've a business award ticket from ATL to DEL in December and supposed to fly back mid Jan from DEL to ATL booked as a standard 140k award.

Now I've work come up in Germany and would like to fly directly from BOM to FRA to ATL (that will be a separate one way stopover ticket paid by company, I cannot use my personal trip and get reimbursed).

So would it be possible to cancel my inbound ticket in Jan and get the 70k miles back? Since I see that the ticket now shows as two 70k segments in account activity, would be 2015 rules apply?

Also (If the 2015 rules don't apply in my case) - I do not qualify for change fee waiver so would not prefer to change the return ticket if I do not get some of my miles back. So if I skip the return portion of the trip - would it cause any scrutiny by TSA/ DHS that a passenger on the flying list didn't board? I least care of Delta on this because I don't have any past skipped legs in the past to have them flag my account.

fti

Def no miles back. I cant imagine it matters at all if you just miss the flight. Happens all the time.

dd1612

1. Your ticket was booked in 2014.
Rules in 2014 will apply to reservations made in 2014.

2. Yes, you can cancel at least 72 hours before scheduled departure.
You can cancel online or call DL CS and ask to cancel. Also ask the CS agent not to rebook immediately.

2.a. Later in the year if you need a 1 way DEL-ATL then pay the change fees and make the reservation. Do keep a copy of the ticket receipt with the Ticket number somewhere safe.
They can only search by Ticket number, not PNR number.

2.b. If you do not ever need a 1 way then let it go! You will lose the balance unused skymiles ticket.

3. So if I skip the return portion of the trip - would it cause any scrutiny by TSA/ DHS that a passenger on the flying list didn't board?

No. This has no effect on TSA/DHS as when you re-enter the USA from FRA you will have a 1 way ticket back to the USA.

It happens more commonly (than people realize) to business travelers.

charms81

Thanks guys! This clears up all my assumptions (false). Surprised to know that I could keep the return open and use it at a later time. That is a nice touch which I'll definitely use.

EchoVictor

How do you know this definitively?

With all the other airlines (AA/UA) that currently allow one-way awards, I believe you can convert a round-trip award into a one way if you've only flown one direction. You can then refund the return segment.

emrdoc

Delta doesn't allow one way awards on tickets booked in 2014 regardless of when flown.

EchoVictor

I agree this is true now but I'm not so certain it will be true in the future. Delta's IT system on January 1 may not be programmed to treat award tickets differently based on issuance dates. It is entirely possible it will just allow a one-way refund. I think you may be right but then again you may not be right. We'll see.

bgriff

I agree with those who are not so sure. It has not been published anywhere that award tickets booked in 2014 will be treated differently after-the-fact than tickets booked in 2015. If you book a ticket now and try to add a stopover on Jan 2, I'm sure you won't be able to, and I suspect that by contrast one-way treatment may become more favorable on Jan 1 regardless of when the ticket was booked.

Of course, Delta has never had a "cancel the second half of an award ticket and get miles back" functionality before (since as of now that would not actually get you any miles returned), so we will see if this option even works correctly for tickets booked after Jan 1. Delta may decide (or tech limitations may force) that the rule is, "if you want to convert a roundtrip to a one-way, you have to cancel the roundtrip and rebook a new ticket" -- which would mean that even if you haven't yet flown the outbound, the lack of award availability for a new ticket could make this effectively undesirable, and that it would become impossible to do this after the outbound was already flown.

kilbornr

Another trick if you will not use the return is to rebook it in economy at the low level rather than business. In this case you would pay 42.5k rather than 70k for that leg and you would get 27.5k miles back that you have already paid. If you are GM, you would need to pay the $200 change fee. Is 27.5k miles worth $200? I would say yes.

Even better would be if you could change the return leg to an open jaw to a region that costs less than 42.5k, but not sure if that is possible.

kilbornr

It looks like if you changed your routing to ATL-DEL-open jaw-CDG-ATL, you could probably get 40k miles back for $200. This would be 70k for the outbound in business and 30k for the return leg in economy.

erik123

And maybe even return from BDA for even more miles?

MSPeconomist

This sounds like the best option to me in that the odds would seem good that someone could use a one way CDG-USA ticket easily. Otherwise, leaving it and trying to change later will make the remainder good only for DEL-ATL since open jaws won't be allowed after NYE.

kilbornr

Why aren't open jaws allowed after NYE? I thought they were only getting rid of stopovers?

charms81

Wow.. you guys are super. I'm getting 40K back if I open jaw it from BDA. With CDG I'm seeing price of 72500 round in economy, so probably get 36250 back.

kilbornr

Glad to help. Delta is trying to screw us, so we might as well beat them with their own rules.