I'm amazed-2 biz using CO miles on DL to GIG
 

I was shocked and wonder if I should be. I wanted 2 biz class to Rio next winter. I sign in to my onepass account...then click home, reward travel, 2, phl-gig. There are plenty of days in Jan09 on DL. I pick the dates, hand over the 90k each in miles and $122 in taxes...done. Simple.

I called CO and spent an half hour and found nothing on DL or CO with the rep. for all of Jan09. So why were they on the web but not the phone...more academic at this point.

Has anyone else had such an nice experience on the CO website? Other cities (maybe eze or gru)?

(Truth be told, I really want to go in Feb 09 but got these tickets as insurance figuring I can redeposit if I have to once Feb seats open up...assuming they do. And if they don't, be happy going in Jan instead.)

This is not surprising. CO does not control DL's reward space, DL does. CO may be stingy with their own seats, and their agents may be terrible at finding partner routings, but the seats on partners are there.

Yes, and certain partners are more inclined to open reward seats more than a few months in advance, unlike CO.

On the other hand, from time to time the website has seats that don't seem to be available to the agents. On Feb 29, the website would let me confirm (even when not logged in) a NW award (at least as far as the pricing page) for ROC-DTW-LAX when neither CO's phone agents nor the NW website (non-elite) could find anything. Irritating because it had to be done by phone in this case (change on the complimentary domestic connection on a previously-issued QF award).

My guess is that the website doesn't quite understand NW's married segment logic properly and the availability was not supposed to be there, but I could be wrong.

CO BF rewards can be easy to get at times for travel to GIG - though not until after Jan15 and way before Madri Gras. April, July are good times. However CO does not open these until about 30 days before departure.

The DL reward inventory is very dynamic and predictably opens about 330 days in advance. You can check DL inventory at delta.com. If availabe on DL it is also available for CO miles. Sometimes with DL you need to check each segment individually. DL does open inventory at times through out the year after the initial 330 day period.

If you want reward travel 11 months in advance - DL is your best option. All of my domestic reward travel or connections are on DL when I want F travel. If DL/NW merge and CO were to hook up with UA, DL would be a big loss for OnePass members. Right now the mergers look to be off.