I'm trying to burn a lot of my Skymiles for my family. Since I moved to Dallas, it's been difficult to get multiple tickets to DL hubs - Y or F. Especially during high demand times like weekends, or vacation times.

However, twice over the last week, once on Wednesday night, then earlier today, I've come across high availability. This was to multiple hubs. Multiple flights were suddenly available for award seats in multiple quanitities. I don't have KVS, so this is just via Delta.com. A lot of these were non-stops, but not for every non-stop during the day. From memory, it was in both Y and F, but not for all flights, and it was more Y availability than F (say 5 flights to 1). And it was not for every hub. It also varied sometimes by the day of the award. It seems like the 40K awards became 25K awards. But the 60K awards stayed at 60K. Inconsistent. Low awards were available for perhaps 30 min each time? The first time it occurred, I took my time, thinking, OK, Delta just opened up more seats. The next time it happened, I was on the phone quick smart.

I've been looking a few times a day, during breaks, and it is near impossible to get those seats. So I can imagine it's a temporary glitch. I've literally been on the phone to Delta to book a ticket, got some seats, then see availability revert to normal, snagging some, but not the others.

Does anyone have any insight into how/why/when this occurs?