Originally Posted by
rankourabu
And that would be beyond what Delta did/does
While DL metal awards are a ridiculous amount (870k is normal), I can reliably get YYZ-Asia for 85,000 on a partner award in J
Likewise, YYZ-Europe is 320k on DL metal, and 75k on KLM.
Low-level DL J awards on DL metal for YYZ-EU are the same as US-EU -- they are CSV1050 awards for 105K each way. They had an award sale for several weeks just recently where they were 64K each way for July and August flights. Contrary to some assertions here, there are no formulas on DL to convert from revenue fare pricing to awards and you can still find reasonable redemptions if you watch for the sales (or take advantage of the partner awards). Coach US-EU on Skyteam partners is 25K each way.
The reality is that DL still has fixed levels, even though they are not published, and they are not nearly as numerous as the revenue fares. So they can't really match award levels to revenue fares even if they wanted to. I understand why people don't like it, but it's still not really like the WN system where there are largely fixed formulas. Delta has had the pay-with-miles option (at 1 CPM) for DL Amex cardholders for over a decade now. If they wanted to go that route for all awards, they certainly would have by now. There are advance purchase requirements for these awards, but they do actually publish these requirements in the fare rules for the awards, so it's not actually a mystery as you can click on the fare rules link and read them.