For years I have always followed the 331 day rule when booking business class tickets on Delta for Europe in the summer; SA in the winter and other places as well. I have always had success. Well, those days appear to be over now unless your willing to shell out 250,000 miles per seat.

I have two recent redemption failures:

Last August I tried booking reward tickets using the 331 days using DL to Europe for this July. No seats on DL although they did manage to get me on Air France which I am okay with but DL never did and still hasn't released any Europe business class seats for the 90,000 redemption. I have been on the waitlist for 8 months to use DL direct from ATL and it hasn't cleared yet.

Second experience: This week I tried booking from ATL to GIG for next Februay again using the 331 day rule. Again "no seats" only in coach unless of course I want to use the 250,000 reward for each ticket. As a Platinum and million mile flier I find this very frustrating!!! IMHO Delta has been issuing miles like crazy while secretly requiring 250,000 per ticket for business class as opposed to the 90,000 you used to always be able to get if you followed the 331 day rule. Is Delta even issuing 90,000 seats anymore for it's popular destinations?

The good news is that I then called American and of course I got business class both ways for myself and my partner, on the exact dates that I wanted and for 90,000 per ticket. Oh yeah and unlike DL I have absolutely no status on American whatsoever but I did have the miles in my account due to credit card usage.

Does anyone know if Delta's new policy is to really require 250,000 business class reward for redemption?? In addition where did the 331 day rule go? Does DL think that it's most loyal Platinum/mile mile customers aren't going to notice the changes when they try to redeem those miles?

As a side note, on my flight home tonight from LAX back to ATL the flight attendant made an announcement about getting the DL AMEX card with 20,000 bonus points...blah ...blah. Then right before landing the flight attendants passed out DL GOLD AMEX applications!! I had to laugh because I for one, won't be using DL to earn miles, instead I think I'll go with a AA credit card where I still can get a business class seat for 90,000 miles using the 331 day rule.