NWA IS

(donning flamesuit)

The changes you all are now seeing were not an explicit change to award availability/inventory. That's a whole 'nother animal that these changes were not designed to address.

I cannot answer anything related to that issue, e.g. specifics/timeline/etc.

JSFox

NWA IS, can you please give us back NWA .COM ???

publicmsu

Care to elaborate what these changes were designed to address? There seems to be inherent functional issues with the calendar not matching with the actual available flights.

Another issue being the routing seems very limited. One user had mentioned 100k JFK-BRU in July. When I search AUS - BRU, I'm presented only with options through ATL. Is there a preferred routing algorithm that tries to route particular regions through specific hubs?

mnredfox

+1

You can join my party. When I was crying wolf about not being able to find a single low MSP-PVG for an entire year out I got the "you're not looking hard enough spiel." Apparently we're both doing everything wrong.

Let's see, did a random check MSP-PVG OW for June to find low days:

June: 0 for coach, 0 for J

I didn't even check the return. Quick hop to CO.com and I find:

June: 6 for coach, 7 for business

I'm not even going to waste my time looking the rest of the year or for the return...

PaulMSN

Tried MSN-HKG in C again. Medium availability across both Nov and Dec, but when you click through, you get 240,000 miles. No low availability, of course. I can change the months now without the interface freezing up, but I can't see any improvement otherwise.

I also checked the DTW-HKG non-stop. Only mediums with a few highs through EOS outbound, for inbound 2 low days in June available, but the rest of the schedule is medium with a few highs. Pathetic. Of course, when I select one of the two low return dates, it offers me 180,000. Nothing significant has changed yet.

PaulMSN

What about the fact that the levels shown in the calendar aren't even available once you click through? That is absolutely maddening.

DL2SXM

really now people, did you all expect miracles to happen so fast? SMI did state that these changes would begin later this month and would take the vast majority of the year to complete.

I for one, like some of the cosmetic changes on www.delta.com and being that I dont expect all the changes and improvments to take place overnight, I will reserve judgement for now and take a wait and see approach, after all, this is what was told to us.

As for the changes I see now, there are some functional aspects of delta.com that are more streamlined and easier to use.

Good start to things delta, keep it up!

lieu

GUWonder

Without underlying changes in award inventory availability/pricing so as to make DL once again comparable to the other major US airlines, this is indeed going to be categorized as DL's "smoke and mirrors".

GBadger

Easier to use? Please see my example above...

When the calendar shows "Medium" and "Low" for US-EU flights (should = 75k in Y), and you click on those dates to get a quote of 107.5k miles (=medium+high), that's not easy to use. If, afterwards, you click right back to the calendar and click continue again, but now get a quote of 92.5k miles (=low+high) that's not easy to use, and not trustworthy. If, you repeat the exercise again (click to see calendar and then click "continue" again) and are again quoted 107.5k miles, that's not easy to use, not trustworthy, and just not working.

An easy to use broken system is still broken, and I'm not even getting into the availability aspect.

If the calendar shows "Medium" and "Low", and you get either a combination of "high" and "medium" or "high" and "low", at random, someone made some serious mistakes while programming.

Osakaboy

It's not working.
I searched AMS-SEA in BE with LOW in September. It showed 180k, instead of 100k.
I also searched NRT-SEA with LOW. I got a message
"There are no flights available for the day requested. Click Back to Change Flight to try another day or to search for different cities."

Come on.

ffI

You do realize that ANY PARTNER AWARD is always in low, so it is no big deal when you do get it in low.
The big deal is the DL low awards.
It is the same across all 3 alliances, the saver awards are seen across the alliance and can be booked by anybody.
So US, (the only one worse than DL) has great awards due to *A availability being open.

DLdweeb

So it took you folks this long to make cosmetic changes to the interface? At this rate it will take forever to address the meat and potatos issues.

FlyingUnderTheRadar

I think most have figured that the inventory "problem" has not been addressed. Further, an intelligent person knows that the inventory is NOT an IT problem but a revenue management problem. That said can you or have SMI give some clue as to what IT functionality has been improved?

Based on my experience this morning I have not seen a substantive changes (in fact a small step backwards). Granted I only checked one routing with a few different configurations but both accuracy and precision are still a problem with the calendar and finding flights. But my time is valuable and if Delta wants me to play beta tester at this point they can damn well pay me.

FlyingUnderTheRadar

Demonstrating to Delta that the Award Calendar is broken is like wrestling with a pig, you'll both get dirty, but only the pig will enjoy it.


BTW I found the following low-low:

You selected these flights:

Washington-Dulles, DC (IAD) to Paris-De Gaulle, France (CDG) on 30 Oct 2010
10:00pm IAD
10:30am CDG Arrives 31 Oct
In-Flight Services Business

Paris-De Gaulle, France (CDG) to Washington-Dulles, DC (IAD) on 20 Nov 2010
10:30am CDG
12:50pm IAD
In-Flight Services Business


Price per passenger (USD):
100,000 Miles required
+ $ 124.90 Taxes/Fees
= $ 124.90 *

I did this search twice once for one PAX and once for two PAX. Same results so some times it is accurate and precise.

turkeyRIOO

ATL-PHX still 40k minimum after 6/10
ATL-SAN 40k min all July

FO -I am traveling

no help for me