I am planning a round trip SEA-LED (St Petersburg, Russia) in April. Would love to purchase on SkyTeam to enjoy my GM status and build MQMs for 2019. But, inexplicably, the fares being offered for every Delta/ KLM/Air France option are just bloody outrageous at over $3600 for Economy class. Fares on various SEA-LED itineraries from OneWorld and Star Alliance are much more in line with conventional springtime fares for round trip travel to Eastern Europe, at between $1200 and $1800. This situation has been a constant for several weeks. In fact, for only a tad more than $3600, I found itineraries on Business Class on OneWorld.

I'm a free market kind of guy, and believe in the idea of "willing and able buyer, willing and able seller", and recognize that SkyTeam is under no obligation to offer me any particular fare, but how it is that the Delta/ Air France/ SkyTeam revenue management systems don't recognize that their fare structure on this route is just way out of line? Could this be a mistake in an algorithm?

I did discover that I could "build my own itinerary": round trip on Delta SEA-AMS, and a separate round trip on KLM AMS-LED, for a very competitive net combined fare of $1350. But this sort of approach always gives me the willies, mainly due to ambiguity in the case of a misconnect.

Loyalty goes only so far . . .and it does not go so far as paying more than twice the competition.