steadyASshegoes

I just got off the phone with the partner desk after successfully booking a trip to Asia next month. Although ultimately successful, it was by no means an easy process. Thought I'd share my experience in case anybody else is frustrated by the byzantine process of partner award redemption.

Flights

Outbound is SEA-NRT-HKG business class in June and KIX (Osaka)-HNL-PDX-SEA coach return in July, both on Delta. CX had no availability whatsoever leaving from anywhere in Japan or Korea and my initial calls to the partner desk also showed no availability on DL through Tokyo or Seoul (and no KE flights since they have ridiculous blackout dates). After searching the forum and playing around with the Delta award calendar, I finally found low-tier DL award space from Japan to Honolulu and the partner desk got me home from there. It took about six calls to finally find a routing that worked.

What I learned

- The Alaska partner desk is incredibly helpful and accommodating. We knew this already, but I can't emphasize it enough. The agents manage to stay friendly and patient despite hounding them with several departure cities, dates, and routes. One even said "You can call back two or three times a day. Don't worry about bothering us, this is our job."

- If at first you don't succeed... call, call again. Partner award availability seems to change a lot.

- Not all possible routings show up in the partner desk's booking system. My routing through Hawaii did not show up at all until I suggested it. It doesn't hurt to look at partners' route maps and look for an unorthodox routing to suggest to the partner desk.

- DL only makes their lowest award level available to Alaska. This is a bummer, but at least you can use the Delta award calendar to see which flights have "Low" tier availability. This has been mentioned in a few threads before, but it's worth mentioning again.

- Quirky partner rules: DL doesn't allow changing carriers in Hawaii on AS-issued award tickets. In other words, you can't do NRT-HNL on DL and HNL-SEA on AS. Strangely, you CAN do NRT-HNL-any mainland city on DL, then connect on an AS flight. This seems silly, since you're essentially using up a Delta seat on a Hawaii-mainland flight that otherwise could have been sold or given as a DL award. But I'm sure Delta has their reasons for this. Stranger still: DL does allow you to change carriers if you're booking with DL miles. Go figure.

- If a stopover isn't normally allowed (e.g. on many open jaw tickets), you might still be able to do a "forced stopover" if there's no other way to get you to your destination. On my flights, there was no Delta availability HNL-mainland on the day I arrived in HNL, so I was forced to do a stopover and fly out the next night, which is what I wanted to do anyway.

What to improve

- An award calendar that encompasses all possible partners on the specified route would be excellent -- then we could easily see ALL partner availability online, using whatever routings we want, and not waste one minute of the partner desk's time. Not only would this be very convenient, it would also be a big time and money saver for AS. I know this isn't easy to do and there may be contractual reasons this cannot be done, but I'm sure it would save a LOT of calls into the partner desk.

- More transparency into what sorts of awards are available on the various partners. I was very puzzled why there was NO award space on DL--until I found out we can only use Low-tier space.

- Mid-tier awards (using more miles). I know there are reasons this doesn't happen--like partners want to save their award space for their own FFers, or cost issues. But maybe as part of the new partnership with DL, something like this will eventually be possible.

- Using mid- and high-tier AS flights on existing low-tier partner awards. I'd be very happy to use an extra 12.5k miles to get a full fare AS segment when a super saver AS isn't available.

- A comprehensive thread with all the AS partner award rules and quirks would be very, very nice...

- One-way partner awards! At half the miles of a round-trip, of course

jackal

Great little mini-pre-trip-report here!

Don't forget one BIG one that may have helped you here: multi-partner awards!

Fortunately, AS has (as far as I recall) indicated that they are working on this (though no timeline has been put forth), so perhaps someday, we'll have much more flexible options by using more than one partner.

maokh

I haven't interacted with the partner desk yet, but I hear these guys are awesome. Its really a big shame that the only option is to call over and over and recite the same itinerary over and over.

It seems like it might be a whole lot cheaper just to buy the ticket, considering the time involved to snag one of these hard to get partner award tickets.

eponymous_coward

(Not at you, at the fact that it's nearly impossible to get TPAC R/T redemption on DL, so you're paying 120K AS miles for an itinerary that's half business, half coach... and those are some LOOOOONG coach segments.)

We really do NOT want this, because what will happen is that we'll shortly find there's no Saver availability, ever, at all, for anything. It's not all that great now. (Go try finding Saver/12.5K on LAS-SEA on a Sunday anytime in the next year, for instance. There isn't any... a YEAR out, for a coach ticket that maybe costs $150-200 on 28 day advance purchase. So, basically, you have to burn 20K at a cent or less per mile. Awesome value, there. )

So, do NOT encourage AS to turn MP into SkyPesos(tm) even more than it already is. The AS50 is pretty much useless (in fact, I'd just rather they turned it into a straight one cent per mile redemption ala DL- at least THAT way you can really use it to burn miles on an expensive coach fare, instead of the joke it is now- there might be some folks in Alaska who would take that deal over the AS 15). Let's not reduce the Saver award to being garbage, too, by encouraging AS to push everything into higher redemption buckets...

Well, if we can redeem for one way awards, mixing and matching AA and DL would be pretty awesome. I'd like that...

vzwdataguy

Hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately I don't ever see myself buying a $1,500+ ticket again unless it's Virgin Atlantic to London with a milage upgrade to Upper Class... so I jump through the hoops.

I'm currently trying to book a long weekend in Shanghai for the 4th of July and working on it for a week, every day, I've pieced together two pax in coach PDX-NRT-PVG-NRT adding a passenger, one leg, to the itinerary a day, on average, when the LOW redemption level shows up on Delta's site. The problem is the last leg NRT-PDX. If I can't get this leg on the day I need it I'll have to cancel the whole itinerary and lose $25x2 for the partner award booking fees.

It's a lot of time and effort for a free trip, and I think the marketing for MP has gotten ahead of the reduced value of the 2010 program. 2007 and before rocked. 2008-2009 were okay. 2010 just stinks, at least if you want to redeem your miles for international coach award travel at 2-3 cpm.

formeraa

To the OP --

Don't be too quick to blame DL for not allowing a connection to AS in HNL! It sounds more like an old agreement that AS negotiated with DL, before AS started service to Hawaii. Before AS-operated service to Hawaii, you would connect through HNL to another DL flight to the mainland and then connect to AS (which was very logical at the time). It sounds like AS needs to take the initiative to update the agreement, but I certainly wouldn't blame DL.

eponymous_coward

I'm actually contemplating doing things like burning AS miles on CX HKG-Australia biz (flying CX regional two-class with lie-flat J), and using those in conjunction with US awards to get me over the water (60K mileage burn on a ~4500 mile flight sounds like pretty decent value to me). I never thought I'd be saying this, but I think I've found something US is better than AS at: providing high-value award inventory.

Basically, DL availability overseas is putrid, AA is OK (but you're not going to many places in Asia on AA by itself). Dunno about BA, KE has lots of restrictions, and CX doesn't seem to be that great getting across the Pacific.

steadyASshegoes

Yeah, it's not ideal. There was absolutely no other inventory on an itinerary that worked for me, so ultimately it came down to a choice of a very expensive ticket or 120k miles. Maybe some low-tier business class will open up on Delta. Maybe.

That's kind of my point... saver availability is pretty limited already, so it's possible that AS saver availability could block an otherwise possible partner booking. If a 140k first-class CX r/t SEA-JNB were thwarted because there was no AS saver space on LAX-SEA, I'd be pretty upset. I'd rather pay the 12.5/25k extra miles. Even better I'd like more saver award space, but that's really a separate issue...

Actually that's what the partner desk agent told me--DL (NW?) put that condition into the agreement when AS started expanding aggressively into HI. I don't know why AS would seek to limit their own FFs' options on connections to partner gateways...

eponymous_coward

And I'd probably go "OK, so I'll buy the $120 ticket and get EQM on that segment."

(Generally, SEA-LAX has saver. It's LAS and the East Coast that is hosed that way.)

missydarlin

To be honest, its much more likely that AS doesn't want to give up its precious HI award resources to use as another airlines connection point.

HI awards are hard to come by as it is... so giving up a 75K RT Hawaii Award Seat for the privilege of paying Delta for an Asia award isn't a great business decision.

keithguy

But one can use DL miles to book KIX-DL-HNL-AS-SEA... that's still AS giving up a Hawaii Award seat while DL pays AS just a portion of the Asia award. It doesn't really save the Hawaii award seats when the restriction applies only to awards using AS miles only, considering how many other FFPs (DL, AA, etc) can book AS flights.

golfingboy

missydarlin:

I also have a question regarding partner award booking.... Often, I have looked into booking award tickets to Europe on Delta and some destinations are served via JFK only... Now the frustrating part is, the LAX-JFK-LAX segments are always in coach... It is so frustrating the only way around this is to connect in DTW/MSP/SLC.

I am not trying to "maximize" my miles' worth, but picking a rational routing where I am at least in the premium cabin the entire trip. Whats more AS pays DL for the seats [unlike DL's customers booking this route for free with miles], so why make this hard for us? Also, DL would be lucky if they even sell half of the J cabin on this route since their fares are obscure.

eponymous_coward

DL's flying their new premium transcon on LAX-JFK to compete with AA/UA/VX, so I suspect that may be why the award inventory is restricted- instead of the usual 20-24 seats on 757s, this one has 16 seats (the same Recaro model as VX). Less seats + nicer F = less award inventory. In fact, complimentary upgrades for DL elites into F on the ex-JFK BizElite transcon routes often don't clear until the gate, from what I've read (read: just like AS transcon, where U space at time of purchase or at MVP waitlist clearing times is scarce as hen's teeth. Not coincidentally: lack of A award space, aka saver, and lack of U often go hand in hand, when you think about it).

Also, if you think that scarce DL inventory at the saver level is AS's fault, you should probably check out the umpteen DL forum threads complaining about no inventory at saver level for DL awards. I'd argue that finding ANY DL award inventory going TATL LAX-XXX-JFK-YYY is probably a minor miracle, and you should jump on it instead of waiting for LAX-JFK-YYY.

golfingboy

Yeah, DL charges 80K miles to book on this route and 150K miles for trips to EU that flies the LAX/SFO-JFK routings. What I am saying is could AS make that 80K/150K level available for us at the low level. What I am saying is consider the 80K/150K level awards as the low level not just 100K awards.

I never said it was AS's fault... I am just saying that AS might be able to strike a deal with DL to allow us to book those flights since those seats are going to be paid for [which DL would love], not free like when a SkyMiles member books J on this route.

I flew this route several times this year and not one flight went out with full revenue J, they are always upgrading 4-8 people per flight.

eponymous_coward

Except, knowing DL and AS's habits of mileage award inflation of recent years, 80/150 would become the new saver award levels for DL domestic F and DL TATL, respectively.

(Please note, for instance, that saver AA domestic F is 65K- and that only gets you a J seat on a three-cabin flight. )

This is definitely a case of "be careful what you wish for, you might get it"- especially given that AS redeems DL TATL at 90K (for now), whereas DL redeems at 100K.

Also, something to consider: it's quite possible a number of those DL customers geting upgrades were higher-fare Y customers, as DL prioritizes upgrades by fare class, in part (I think the tiebreakers are elite status, fare class, using a DL-branded AMEX, and time of purchase, along with phase of the moon and last night's Powerball drawing), and would be MORE profitable than a seat sold to AS as part of a mileage redemption. I'm pretty sure if DL thought selling seats via partner award redemptions was more profitable than selling coach seats to elites with the carrot of potentially getting the nice seat at the front of the plane, they'd do a lot more of it. The fact that they don't probably means it isn't.