Find non DL flights, and have all the posibilities written down so you can spoon feed the agent. DL agent routing = 320k biz. JC routing = 120k. Just make sure you know KE's blackout dates.

ICN-SEA-ICN is newest full-flat business class. It seems there's no problem booking full flat C with same mileage, "yet". ICN-CGK is frequently full flat C but only until April.

I wouldn't suggest connecting via LAS unless u don't have too many luggages.

LAS international arrival locates on a separate building and everyone has to drag baggage to main terminal to recheck

Last fall my wife and I flew JFK-ICN and return on DL miles in Y. We had booked them many months in advance, but at the time it sure didn't seem like that route was difficult to score award seats on.

Thanks for the excellent information, bobbybrown. Do you know if the same blackout periods apply between Korea and Europe?

Is there no way to search for KE awards online now? I have a coach ticket departing in a couple weeks and I've been wanting to move it up to biz but no availablity. I'm tired of calling every day. It was so nice when there was actually a decent web site to check these things on... RIP nwa.com.

To the best of my knowledge, really no way to see KE at all.

koreanair.com no go - even if you register you can not see it if you don't have enough KE miles

expertflyer and KVS also no go - both only show KE A class (FC), that is not available from DL

Now the best or the only way to check is to call DL. The agent on the other side of the line can search in weekly basis.

FYI - I just called to check ATL/JFK-ICN coach award seats availability from December 1 to December 10 -- No luck at all. Only one business seat is available on December 4 on JFK-ICN KE0082, 12:40PM departure.

I thought I would share an interesting experience I just had with KE using my Delta miles. My wife and I had booked 2 award tickets to Asia at 120k a pop on a mixture of DL/KE in Business class a while back on NWA.com. The return flight had us flying BKK-ICN on KE..landing at 8:00AM...then having to wait until 7:30 PM to fly ICN-JFK on KE (a 747). We wanted to fly out on the other KE flight at 11:00am from ICN-JFK so we wouldnt have to wait in ICN airport all day but of course Delta/KE never opened award seats on this flight...and the 11:00am flight has the brand new Prestige Sleeper seats whereas the 7:30PM flight did not.

To make a long story short, we arrived in ICN at 8:00am and went straight to the transfer desk and they switched us to the 11:00AM flight for a $100 change fee, no problem!! I didn't think they would let us do that since they were award tickets using DL miles but they did ^^^ I guess it helped that there were at least 30-40 empty seats in business on that flight..

It's good to know that KE offers you some options.

Grrrr, trying to figure out the blackout dates for KE.

I want to book KE intra-Asia and I have a PM agent who swears the blackout means blackout, regardless of location. I suggested to her it was US-Asia-US but she swears it isn't. She then gave me the spiel that she has been working for 35 years blah blah blah.

Another agent I called (line got disconnected) was able to find flights with availability, but the current agent says that she can see availability but won't be able to book because it's "blacked out."

Is she wrong? Should I just call back? What is the rules for KE blackouts intra Asia? Very little info on FT and on the web (that I could find).

Would be nice to have partner searches back. (hint hint nwa.jp).

I found this info from Web Archive of NWA dated 2008-04-10.

http://web.archive.org/web/200804101...s.shtml#korean

This is NOT for 2010 and NOT published by DELTA, but this was KE Black-out dates by NWA in 2008.
It may indicate which season will be black-out dates.


2008:

Flights departing from United States and Canada:
May 19-31; Jun 1-30; Dec 8-23

International (departing Korea, Japan, Asia, Oceania, Europe and Middle East):
Jan 1-13; Feb 1-7; Jul 20-31; Aug 1-20; Sep 12-14; Dec 28-31

Domestic Korea:
Jan 1; Feb 5-11; Jul 16-31; Aug 1-24; Sep 12-16; Dec 30-31

---
2009:

Flights departing from United States and Canada:
May 23-31; Jun 1-30; Jul 1-5; Dec 12-27

International (departing Korea, Japan, Asia, Oceania, Europe and Middle East):
Jan 1-11; Jan 23-27; Jul 17-31; Aug 1-16; Oct 1-4; Dec 23-31

Domestic Korea:
Jan 1-4; Jan 23-28; Jul 17-23; Oct 1-5; Dec 30-31

They are right. DL blocks all KE's blackout dates regardless of origin/destination. Which makes 5 months blocked for KE award using DL miles. Look at the link of korean air website: http://www.koreanair.com/local/na/gd...sp_rm_ka02.jsp

It shows many ranges of dates, and all are blocked regardless of which route. Even for intra-Asia (same as other routes), you cannot get KE award for (in 2010)
1.1 ~ 1.10, 2.12 ~ 2.15, 5.22 ~ 7.11, 7.16 ~ 9.5, 9.17 ~ 9.26, 12.11 ~ 12.31.
Yes, ALL of them. In 2011, there are many more domestic blackout dates, and I'm not sure DL blocks even for those dates too.

Well, the problem is getting DL agents to know this. Why is it that I have to explain the rules to DL agents? They only read what's on their screen, so I can't blame the agent themselves, just mgmt or IT who can't program this stuff right.

And every time I say otherwise, they just reread the screen to me and tell me what I'm reading is from KE.com, not DL.com (duh, DL.com says nothing about blackouts except some vague statement about it).

The other day, I had some agent telling me that the KE blackouts apply to all partners as well. Really, so no award travel for anyone on those dates? Really.

Yet another agent didn't even know we could book on MU. The y first told me that "KE and DL" are the only airlines I can book flights in Asia for. How's that for a global airline?

Seriously DL, fix this stuff now or just go ahead and keep aggravating your global customers. See what works better.

I wanted to book CDG-ICN-NAN r/t on KE with return Dec 15. Not possible due to blackout period according to the first rep I spoke to so I booked a return on Dec 3 instead. This was after arguing that blackouts were only for US flights. Well, she didn't listen and at least it was an itinerary to work on and free changes as DL plat.

Called back the next day and changed the return to Dec 15 and voila..! Ticket haven't been reissued yet though but hopefully...:p