I have read many of the horror stories regarding DL ff redemtpions so I was surprised when I recently needed to acquire a reward ticket NYC-SIN that the easiest redemption was on DL.

In this case, the travel needed to be booked only about 10 days in advance, and I realize this is not a lot of leadtime for award travel

I researched a number of airlines, including ANA, JL, AF, and SQ. None of these had any availability. Only SQ could put me on a waiting list, and only at their highest redemption tier of 240,000 pts roundtrip (this is for coach).

I tried CO, not expecting much since CO clearly doesn't fly to SIN, but I was surprised to find no *A options made available.

DL was really a final, desperate attempt. After fiddling with the dates slightly, I was able to redeem a roundtrip JFK-SIN (via NRT) for 105,000 miles, not the cheapest, but, in my mind, a good value given the short leadtime.

Although only one example, I think this episode demonstrates that even an apparently unloved system can have its pluses.