Originally Posted by
akcae
That statement makes me sad. If I'm being charged SEVERAL HUNDRED THOUSAND miles for an award, I should be able to get what I want, when I want.
Just to put it in perspective, to earn 400,000 Skymiles as a general member, I'd have to have spent EIGHTY THOUSAND DOLLARS on DL tickets. Why on earth would anyone make that kind of investment in a so-called loyalty program, and then have to be "flexible" on dates to redeem for a single award?
Agreed. I just looked at AA, and the absolute highest price for LAX-SYD in J is 175k/person/direction. In fact, the highest price for F is 210/person/direction. They also have several dates in Oct where J is available at Saver price of 62.5k. These flights require a connection in SFO to QF metal, but that's still a good price. Plus, the QF flight is on a 747.
I've actually had a couple times recently when I've considered cancelling DL awards to book more aspirational or more convenient flights using UA or AA miles, but I never went through with it because I don't think I'll ever get better value for my SkyMiles than what I've already booked.
To the OP, if you really want to use DL miles to Australia and aren't opposed to spending a night in China, you might be able to search segment by segment for LAX-PVG-SYD and then get a good agent to put it together for you. IIRC, that route was normally available until a couple months ago (well after VA availability dried up), but the flight timing no longer lines up to do it without an overnight stop. Even if you can get that to work for one direction, that would save you 100k miles or more per person.