Originally Posted by
rylan
And also note hat even though the flight may be available for booking at about T-335 (sometimes takes a day or two more), that doesn't mean you'll get the best ticket prices either. That used to be true years ago, but now DL seldomly loads initial inventory with low fare buckets.
You can basically tell if you are getting lowest currently available Main level on a route if it books into NV award class as DL duplicates their revenue classes with award classes. Highest priced to lowest inventory/award Main Cabin classes are NY/NB/NM/NH/NQ/NK/NL/NU/NT/NX/NV (which duplicates Y/B/M/H/Q/K/L/U/T/X/V Main Cabin revenue classes). DL currently looks to have slightly lower fares and awards from SMF vs. SJC/OAK/SFO to DUB for early Fall 2024 Main awards which start at 74.8K miles roundtrip with Amex 15% discount out of SMF vs. 81.6K out of SJC/OAK/SFO. No way to know if this will also apply to Fall 2025 travel at this point, but it is probably worth comparison shopping between them.
In addition to having a roundtrip booking requirement, these award levels have day of week travel requirements -- Sun to Wed outbound travel and Tue to Fri return travel. Traveling on other days of the week will result in slightly higher award levels applying to flights.
