I've largely given up on Delta to Asia via rewards and since that was an important benefit for me they have lost most of my business. I did a bunch of business with BA the last 12 months, ran up a good mileage balance and then redeemed for 5 seats on CX in business to Bali for my extended family (all seated in the minicabin on a cirrus equipped plane). Today I was just looking for how to use my BA 2for1 to Africa and found tons of space.

While BA has lots of taxes and admittedly BA metal is steep for some awards, hey, at least you get great availability. That's great that people can find CZ and VN availability with the SMs, but quite frankly I see that as a pretty big step down in terms of quality. DL or KE metal with the lie flats would be the only way I would want to redeem to Asia on Skyteam and its hard to argue with the statement that you have slim pickings with just those two carriers. I'll run out my DL miles with otherwise outrageously expensive domestic awards, even paying 40k per pop for summer travel is a decent exchange.