Cut/pasted from Delta award ticket payment page:

"Because this itinerary was created using Medallion® availability, the names of the Medallion passengers can't be changed.
Medallion must be traveling to receive greater award seat availability."

The thing is, my husband isn't Medallion - it was a 25K award from an account totaling ~27K miles (so I guess he is silver, actually). Still, I know many people book flights for friends or family in situations where the actual account holder/mileage owner isn't flying. Until now I've never had a problem booking award flights using miles from either my husband's account or my Dad's (he has more miles than he will ever use so we just pay the fees back to him.

Is this new, and is there any way around it online? The same availability seemed to be displayed for both of them when logging in, even with the major difference in available miles.