The original poster seems more upset that he was being treated differently because he was on an award ticket. Frankly, if his award ticket included the connecting flight, there is no reason he should have been denied the re-routing when seats were available and others in the same situation (on paid tickets) were re-routed. Interesting that this was on DL as I've noticed a number of posts on the DL forum that relate similar failures by DL to re-book ticketed award flights following schedule changes, flight delays, or cancellations. I was always under the impression that once booked, airlines treated award tickets like any other ticket when things occurred that are outside the traveler's control. It's disconcerting that DL appears to be moving away from that. Requiring award seats to be available to re-route someone on an award ticket when there are delays/cancellations seems ridiculous and could easily lead one to be stranded.