Since the CO award reservation online engine can't access delta award seats I used NWA's and pulled up some standard award possibilities. I then rried to book award reservations on the phone with CO using onepass miles and was told that the DL flights were not available in the standard reward category. Went back to NWA and booked it online using worldperks miles as a standard award.

Anyone know if CO and NWA have access to different DL award availability?

can you post more details?

i recently coordinated a trip using CO and DL miles on DL metal, but the CO agent initially told me there was no availability for the destinations I wanted. I had to tell him to look at specific flights (using flight numbers from the NWA.com site). Similarly, the first CO agent I talked to said they couldn't make reservations more than 10 months out, even though DL releases their seats 331 days out. I called back, spoke to a different agent, and was able to book the DL seats.

It was for an August 05 SFO to BOS flight. The CO agent did check DL flights after I requested for her to expand the search to NW and DL and I inquired specifically on a routing that showed up via NWA as a standard reward but was told that routing as not available using OnePass miles.

Just today I booked my honeymoon with CO miles on DL metal. Could not have been any easier, 150k total miles for 2 r/t first class between EWR-HNL on the dates that I wanted. No easypass....

I used the Northwest engine to search Northwest flights and Korean air flights and got everything I wanted. I wonder if this is just a DL thing? Maybe Continetal only gets a certain number of DL seats to use? You could always try calling back, you may get an answer you lik.e

I often get DL flights as the only standard awards possible to AMS when using nwa.com

It's as if it's set up that way on purpose.

While the interface sucks, I usually use delta.com to search for DL availability, and have found CO to map it exactly.

Hello,

I am having a similar problem using onepass miles for a flight from BDL-SAN in September. NWA.com shows tons of availability for delta flights while on the phone with continental, they said there is no availability on the return with Delta.

I have already called the onepass desk twice and have gotten the same answer.

So I am resurrecting this thread to see if anyone has figured out if award inventory for DL is different for NW and CO?????

PS. realizing this is a CO forum.....there is no availability on CO, thus the need to travel on DL.

Thanks.

Each airline gets/sells a certain amount of seats on each other. Just because NW has a seat for WP members does not mean that CO does. Each airline sets out how many seats are going to be available to their partners and then each partner decides how many of those seats made available to them they are going to offer. On the same note CO might have standard award seats available on CO flights, but try and book through NW and they only have rulebuster awards available.

Try having the agent "blind sell" the DL award seat....

I'm thinking the same thing you are. Today, I learned that you cannot use CO OP miles to upgrade any DL flights; you can only use miles to claim a reward seat in either F or Y. (I was going to buy H-class tix on CO from DC-HNL via CLE and LAX; the LAX-HNL leg was op by DL. I was asking if I there were upgrade seats in inventory when the rep told me it didn't matter - DL won't allow upgrades using CO miles.)

About 2 months ago, I offered to fly 4 people (family members, of course) DC-DEN rt (economy, of course ) on reward tix. There was about 4 weeks of lead time before their travel dates, but when I went to book, CO told me there were NO reward seats available on any CO-operated flights, except one that included one leg in F, and the rest in Y at some exorbitant price of like 75K miles per ticket. The agent said, "Wait a minute - let me check something else..." and lo and behold, found 4 seats on CO-codeshares op by DL for all 4 segments, at 25K mi/ticket.

Question:
Is CO using DL as a means of reducing the size of its OP mileage liability, and perhaps secondarily to provide service to a few more places that it doesn't fly, but otherwise doesn't consider DL a partner on the same level as the rest of their partners? (Obviously, CO would never admit to this publicly.) Thoughts?