I'm not as familiar with booking SkyMiles awards as many others, but I thought the following should be possible...

I'm looking to travel ICN-WAS in J. I've currently got an 80k SkyMiles award ticket confirmed routing ICN-ORD-LGA in KE J (O inventory) and DL F (R inventory). I purposely ticketed to LGA, knowing the large amount of NYC-WAS flights. Today I saw a connecting DL LGA-DCA flight had opened up 1 seat in R inventory (pricing at 25k miles for a one-way - so it's certainly the lowest R bucket). Yet, when I call DL they claim there's absolutely no way to add that LGA-DCA segment to my existing award without collecting an additional 25k miles.

Yet, if everything is in O/R inventory, shouldn't it price out at the original 80k redemption, which just a little bit more collected in taxes? This routing appears to be valid, per KE MPM and routing rules that I thought now applied to awards. The DL agent says this isn't possible, and had the nerve to tell me I should be happy paying 105k for the award since the cheapest ICN-WAS J award she can currently find is pricing out at 375k miles one-way (which is absolutely absurd this is being accepted as the new normal).

Should I keep trying, or is what I'm being told by DL accurate?

-FlyerBeek