I started lurking in this forum after not being able to find tickets to Hawaii a couple of weeks ago. A little bit of my history with Delta: I think I've only flown Delta on a paid fare once or twice in the last couple of years so I am admittedly not among their current best customers. Most of my mileage was accumulated when I was flying for business in the late 1990's. I accumulated somewhere in the neighborhood of 400k miles through travel, CC spend, bonuses, etc. At the moment, I've got 120k miles remaining in my account.

Up until this point, it seemed most airlines played the game about the same way. They restrict base awards like crazy. However, as long as you're willing to book well in advance and are flexible with the days you're willing to fly, you can usually find something. I wanted to fly to Maui (or really anywhere in the Hawaiian Islands) around April 18 and back around April 26. What I found with Delta was nothing in April - In fact, I looked at the availability calendar for the entire year and found nothing flying to either OGG or HNL. I know they've always restricted award availability, but this is rediculous!

So anyway my wife and I scraped up 70,000 miles between our two United accounts and found flights - not just any flights, but flights on weekends to the islands we wanted to visit (I haven't had status with United in years either).

Here's what I've figured out from the whole process:
1. In hindsight, it would have been better to cash in the miles when I still had some type of Medallion status (at the time I had not a lot of desire to cash the miles in, however, since I was usually able to schedule personal trips around a business trip).
2. My leisure flight decisions going forward will be far less based on mileage accumulation and more on fares. If United has the cheapest fare, I'll probably fly them since their miles still appear to be worth something. If Delta is among the lowest fares, I will probably choose other carriers even though SLC is my home market and Delta has the most flights to choose from.

Here's what's stupid - Delta continues to pimp its credit card and there seems to be no end to non-flight bonus miles. The other day I got some come-on to earn elite status by flying hardly any miles at all over the next few months. The devaluation problem doesn't seem to have an end in sight. One day hopefully I'll find a decent use for the 120k miles I have left over.