problem with Delta one-way ticket: 12.5K on search page but 25K on confirmation page
 

I searched an one-way ticket from SFO-MIA on flying blue, which has the lowest award level on Delta.

the search page shows "Classic Award 12500 miles + 5 USD", however, after I clicked the "next, trip overview", the webpage says "Number of miles required 25000". There is a red sentence saying "Your Miles balance does not enable you to reserve an award ticket for this trip. Please modify your selection."


Does anyone know what happened here ?

Thanks,

Yi

Why don't you call FB? Either it is a problem of availability (availability does not always update correctly so you may well see it as available for 12.5k while in fact there is no availability in that bucket but only in flex awards) or it is a system glitch. The FB people will be able to confirm exactly which it is.

I have booked FB awards on Delta 3 times in these 4 months and every time (no exception) I had the same experience as you. I thing that they show on page 1 which tickets are available at a certain moment of the day (i.e. in the morning) and that page 2 is completely automatically (completely linked to the booking systems).

In my case I always check different dates, click through to page 2 and 3 to be sure of availability and which price it really is. As result I found one-way Delta tickets from SFO to europe for as low as 25000 miles and €16 (I flew one yesterday), although at page one that was not indicated as FB of course favors filling AF/KLM seats and making a profit out of us (klm/af seats are 25000 miles and €200+ ).

Advise: check a few days in a row as availability changes ( certainly on Delta which has a terrible booking system, check delta skymiles blog).

Are you saying that you used delta.dumb for searching award seat availability AND also for booking such a seat using your FB miles?

you can use delta.dumb to search for available seats, but you need to use FB online or via phone to book. I'd call FB Canada to get the ticket issued for 12.5k miles and $.

At that time, AF customer service was closed. I ended up calling their line in Asia and got the 12.5K price. The agent also waived the ticket fee.

Thanks for your suggestions.