Originally Posted by
Kacee
It's really hard to get a UA saver J award SFO to Europe as well. And if you book as a UA standard award, you're going to be right in that same 1.5 to 2 cpm range.
Agreed that UA is more stingy out of their hubs (as is Delta of course) but there's still a huge difference between UA and DL miles on non-saver awards. UA is really good about having availability at their "everyday" rate on almost all routing assuming you book at least month or two in advance (and also some great last minute availability). I may have to pay 300K to get to SFO to Europe on a regular award, but that gives me a ton of flexibility. Want to book Monday to Friday and connect to EWR or IAD in Polaris? UA says "sure, go ahead!"
With Delta, if I want to get the "low low" rate of 460K to book a month in, you better fly out Tuesdays and you better want to take that funky two stop route... oh, and by the way, one of those legs is in Economy. Oh, wait, you wanted the non-stop or one-stop? That's 650K please. Wait, you really wanted to fly out on Monday? That's 750K. Delta makes their "high tier" award availability feel like searching for saver award levels on other programs.
To play devil's advocate, UA
does block some very high demand routes even at the Everyday level if you start booking too close to departure - whereas Delta will pretty much always give you a ticket (even if at exorbitant rates).
I get good value using DL miles TPAC and intra-Asia. I flew BKK-SFO on CI in May for 95k DL miles. Priced as a half-RT, that penciled at 2.5 cpm; priced as a OW, 3.2 cpm. (Very similar to redeeming UA for BR on same route.) I've gotten similar values booking KE intra-Asia with DL miles.
Definitely some good redemption values on Delta partners (especially if you avoid the JV ones). It's unfortunate that Delta makes it hard to find these (whereas UA is very good at putting every possible partner option in front of you).