Originally Posted by
wjb123
He found various flight options over the course of 5-6 days that i was unable to find myself. We decided to use Delta miles since I have the most there. Yes he charges a fee but well worth it as I was unable to book Biz class all the way through and for only 100k per ticket. Very pleased.
I would imagine that he found partner availability that doesn't show up on Delta.com searches. This can be the hardest thing for non *A, since you have to cobble together searches from across multiple sources to get a handle on which partners may have the availability you need.
MileValue has some good articles on this and which airline sights let you search which airline partners (e.g AA.com searches BA & AirBerlin, but not Qantas or Cathay Pacific IIRC). Wikipedia for airport entries can also be a great way to work backwards from your destination airport or from bottle-neck airports to find out which partners you should be looking for availability on.