105K is almost the mid level, which is 120K.

Some of DL's intra-asia flights, especially NRT-HKG and NRT-SIN, are notoriously hard to find low level award, either Y or J. What makes it worse is that DL has no partner flying these routes.

^^

Took the DL (old NW metal) 747-400 HNL-ATL last August before they switched to using the A330 and agree that the service on this flight as well as the hard product in first was top notch. Was lucky enough to book this as a partner award with CO miles before they left SkyTeam. Would definitely redeem on this route again if available.

Certainly 105,000 miles was considerably less than SQ, which was the only other availability I found for this itinerary. SQ had me on the waiting list for 240,000 miles (in Y).

Given the fact the trip was booked only 10 days before departure, I felt 105,000 was reasonable.

Also, DL had plenty of availability on this route throughout August, whereas there was no avaialability on any other carrier I checked.

DL definitely for the upgrades. Even as a DL silver out of MSP I've had pretty good luck on upgrades. As far as CO goes, most of my CO flying is on jungle jets, so not much CO upgrading for me. O my main line flying, Ive had 2 trips that were entirely mainline, one was paid F, the other I was upgraded IAH-LAX on a 753 on the way there and LAX-IAH (753) and IAH-MSP (735) on the way back. I think it was unusual, even after I upgraded F was 14/24 and 3/8 for seats filled.

We use most of our DL miles for domestic flights to visit family and have generally had good luck on the MSP-MSY or MSY-MSP routes that we do a lot. In fact, I think we've redeemed 5 DL domestic RT's this year (all but one MSY-MSP or vice versa). I know some will say waste of miles but, frankly, it seems I can generate miles at a rate faster than I really have time off to use them and eliminating some of our many $350-400 RT tickets adds up over the course of the year. All at 25k reward levels. It does seem that DL's award calendar, at least domestically, opened up some about a month ago.

On the other hand, I hang on to our CO/UA miles. I was able to send my wife up to Chicago on relatively short notice over the 4th on the 15k + $85 award level and found two great thanksgiving routes for MSY-DEN on CO for 25k each. DL had nothing to offer us at those times and thanksgiving flights were starting to get expensive or inconvenient.

Not much exotic flying here (though a LOT of BA and soon AA miles in the bank).

Can't say much with regard to status. Should be DL FO in 2 weeks and Gold in about 6. Hope for a last minute match to CO and I'll figure out which I'll stick with next year. Was thinking hard about *A but the DL award upgrade option will get a test from me in October. As with many though, my wife gets the free tickets and I'll try to maintain status which means award upgrades won't help me a whole lot and her none at all.

That's true but you can always find mid tier award on almost every DL flight. It's also the same with UA. If you use 130K UA miles, you can fly USA-Singapore any day.

Avoid DL like the plague, there needs to be award seats to get an upgrade right? Check awards to HNL at the low level for the time of the year you plan on travelling and also the numerous thread in th DL forum. If you have no choice and have to fly DL, at least credit the miles to AS and then you can redeem on AA which has much better awards.

From what I understood, CO allows a free stopover and a free open jaw with reward tickets.

With CO also you can get this by using 37.5K miles. Since UA and AA have one-way awards, you can do the same as well. With BA you can have unlimited stopovers along all published connections points (you have to pay very high fuel surcharge though, except on AA redemptions).

Not for within Lower 48 + Alaska. Those are open-jaw only; no free stopover.

I am sticking with DL for several reasons, especially for the unlimited upgrades on domestic flgihts. I am batting 100% this year on those.

Gotcha ^

Keep in mind you will have AS as a redemption option on DL (which has a LOT of flights going West Coast-Hawaii now), and UA/US on CO. (Given the existing miles on DL, this is why crediting to DL might make more sense than crediting to AS.)

Personally, I'd do some dummy itineraries for your possible destinations and see what works best in terms of saver availability. (For the AS flights to Hawaii, you might want to use alaskaair.com to look for saver inventory, as opposed to delta.dumb.)

If you can pay for Business, definitely do CO. The redemptions are much easier. In my recent experience, 1 OP mile = 2 SkyMiles. I'm not kidding.

sq ewr to sin non-stop has no y cabin. It is business class only. So. Are u sure it was y via fra?