Originally Posted by
GYEWorldTraveler
It's so weird that I have never had an issue getting a domestic 25k award before. 1 day, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, 300 days (350 days is not possible, DL only does advance booking up to 331 days).....I think it has to do more with elite status than anything. If you don't have any and you are what people here refer to as a "kettle", your low award is typically 32,500-40,000. Where I have issues is trying to book BE awards internationally.
As someone else posted above, it is amazing how much easier and user friendly some airlines (like COs) award calendar tool is. I really hope an enhancement comes so that we can book one-way awards for 1/2 the mileage on DL because if I am not mistaken this is possible on UA and AA. Some of the award ticket rules DL has are to be quite honest, customer unfriendly. No ability to do a routing like TUL-DTW-ORD(destination)-MSP-FAR for one 25k award. It would cost me 50k at low level to do this because it prices out as 2 seperate one-way awards. I still think someday that DL will fix this and fix the award calendar but it obviously isn't a top priority.
I was a DM untill 2/28 of this year, was PM for years before that, and am now lifetime GM because of over 2M DL/NW bis miles. As a result, my status is by definition not a roadblock.
The disintegration of the program is the same for everybody. There is no enterprise in any sector that can survive on its top 3% of current repeat customers (at DL that is DM, PM and GM).
Anyone who has had "no trouble" supposedly snagging 25K tickets has either not attempted to redeem during the last 17 months, or does not redeem DL miles for more than one trip per year for either short distances or for non-highly-desirable destinations.
That is how the current DL 6% "low" booking success algorithm is designed.
The vast majority of DL's revenue actually comes from "kettle's". To not allow them or us as non-kettle's frequent booking success at competitive redemption levels (25K domestic Y, 120K international J without regard to stage length) is equivalent to Delta drinking poison and hoping that their customers die as a result. I can assure you that that is what Delta executives are doing now and it is proving to be the carrier's undoing.