hfly, the OPer isn't looking to travel to Europe in 3-4 weeks. He said that 3-4 weeks ago, he looked at the award calendar as far out into the future as it would go, and it had no low-tier availability. Then, yesterday he performed the same search and, lo and behold, there was a decent amount of low-tier availability. In short, he was complaining about the flakiness of Delta's award calendar, not short-term availability of award seats (in the middle of high season, no less!).

In your hasty reading, you concluded the latter, and responded with sarcastic incredulity, not once, but twice. In fact, you further advised him that 3-4 weeks out is the worst time to look, which anyone with common sense would realize. While that may be true, it has no relevance to his complaint.

Personally, I'd advise pulling an Emily Litella at this point, but to each his own.

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OPer, many other people have noticed the flakiness of the Delta booking engine. Delta is well aware of it. As others have advised, your best bet is to keep looking. I'd also advise occasionally clearing out your cookies, as some have opined that tier availability, and even ticket pricing, can change based on your search history. I am deeply skeptical that Delta's IT dept is capable of that level of sophistication, but, what the heck, I'll err on the side of caution and clear them out anyway.

Also note that FT is a great place to learn, but it's not always a warm and fuzzy place for newbies. In FTers' defense, they are offering up their considerable expertise for free, and the volume of people coming through here is enormous, so please be respectful of their time. If a question can be answered by browsing the forum or a simple search and you've failed to do that, expect some responses to be laced with sarcasm.

But, hey, at least they respond, which is more than I can say for a lot of boards!