fairhsa

I've never flown Delta but have 46,000 skymiles from the NW merger (which I earned by flying Malaysian, I don't live in Europe).

I want to fly from UK - MSP return, buy and economy ticket and use the miles to upgrade to Business. I have NO STATUS of any kind.

Is this possible? How does it work? Can I confirm the upgrade or is it one of those airlines where you don't know until you board practically? Can anyone explain in English because I cannot figure it out by surfing the Delta website!

And - is KLM any better, because I could use it on them instead!

tentseller

Your best bet for DL is MSP JFK LHR.

To upgrade you need to buy at Y B or M fare and use your points. It is only possible if there is upgradeable inventory, fare class Z.

You can do it on a DL flight codeshare with KLM - MSP AMS LHR.

If you are in Asia you should look at using these point on Skyteam Asian partners. Better value.

NCommander

It should be noted for the record that M fares are extremely expense, and I find business on Delta not to be worth the price of admission, though YMMV. If your booking more than 50 days out, an I business class fare usually should come out close or lower than an M fare.

EDIT: To above poster: I thought you could only upgrade on DL operated flights?, I do know under some cases you can upgrade KL or AF using with a SWU, but not with miles. (granted, this info may be out of date ...)

fairhsa

Thanks - very helpful. I fly only Cathay in Asia so no real opportunities to use them here, and I really NEED to fly to MSP next July to go to a wedding - so it would be great to use them up for something good!

fairhsa

Thanks... I think. Had a bit of troubling understanding your post - what did "though YMMV" mean?

Any ideas for best ways to book an i class fare? I'd be open to that (it's how I'm getting to the UK in the first place from HK) - is it better to try the Delta website or are there other websites more useful? Tried FareCompare and found it to be a waste of time, could not figure out how to ask for biz class in the first place and when looking at economy the 'deals' turned out to be differently priced when you linked thru to the original site!

NCommander

YMMV - your mileage may vary (i.e., I don't value Delta's businessElite product worth the price I'd have to pay to upgrade from my company purchased LUT fares)..

I use expertflier to look at Delta fares usually, and I fares are buried somewhere on delta.dumb (I'm not qutie sure where since the redesign went live); I think this is the link you need: http://www.delta.com/planning_reserv...ls/flights.jsp

I generally consider I fares to be fairly reasonable on the most part if your willing to buy an out-right business class ticket instead of upgrading, and given the choice, I'll buy I vs. M+SWU miles every time if the price of M and I are similar.

That being said, I just looked at the price of MSP-LHR in I vs M, and the I fare is nearly double, so in this case, buying M and upgrading is better value.

EDIT: Looked at JFK-LHR round trip on its own, round trip in M is $2208.00, while round trip in I is $2803.00. For having a confirm J ticket and bonus miles, I'll probably buy I in this case if I can meet the requires of the fare.

fairhsa

Thanks for that - I'll have a look at the M class fare. I was going to ask "how do I know it's M class" but then I looked at the Delta website and they do at least allow you to specify - kudos to them for that (I spent 30 mins on the phone to Iberia confirming my flight would earn Cathay tier status miles on a recent 'mile run'!)

Gargoyle

Note that there are two types of Skymiles:
RDM's (Redeemable miles- the standard miles you earn and spend, of which you have 46k)
MQM's (EQM's- elite qualifying miles- they determine your current medallion status with Delta).

Medallions get complimentary domestic upgrades, space available. The higher your status and fare bucket, the better a shot at the upgrade, but on flights with lots of empty seats up front and few medallions, even Silvers (FO) get upgraded.

If you have no status, you need to buy the upgrade, only available from certain fare buckets (HKQYBM domestic, YBM international).

fairhsa

Thanks for that. So is there any way to know if I will be able to upgrade before I purchase this M class fare?

Can I sort out the upgrade online now (months ahead of time)?

And anyone any idea how many I need for LHR - MSP and back?

NCommander

If the OP got their miles from NW, then they are RDM, and I don't believe he would still have status at this point (I may be mistaken though). That is a good note about a domestic fare classes, but if booking international M, then the domestic segments should also end up in M if the agent books it right.

Gargoyle

V class is upgrade class. You need to confirm V class availability. A phone agent should be able to do that.

I didn't realize that, but it makes sense. An important subtle detail of how the system works. thanks.

fairhsa

Yes, I can confirm that me (she) has no status with Delta - no medallion anythings. Just 46,000 normal miles to use for flights etc. But I don't care about upgrading on the short haul sectors, only the transatlantic ones.

I just tried to book what I REALLY want to do, which is to fly from BRS (bristol) which is near my parents home, and avoids the hell that is Heathrow - to MSP and then back to LHR to catch my Cathay flight home.

The price looked good.. the outbound flight through Amsterdam was fine .... and coming back I had three options, each of which took more than THIRTY hours via Baltimore. ...???? When I searched for M class for the LHR return direct there were plenty of direct flights to choose from ... so how to I make this silly booking engine show them to me?

Anyway - to bed now ... to struggle on again with this in the morning.!

NCommander

Well, let's say I'm flying ROC-JFK-AMS. When you look at fare codes, they work off a starting point, and a departure points. As long as you meet all the routing rules + the requirements for the fare, everything should end up in the same fare class. If you can't meet all the requirements, then the flight will be booked as multiple fare classes based off the fare routing codes end up. If all else falls (i.e., no fare routing codes can be matched), the ticket will end up in a Y fare which is unrestricted on routing, with only a max mileage.

This isn't definitive, but my experiences based off flying connector flights on Delta, and how the ROC-JFK or ROC--ATL segment would show up.

That being said, sometimes going multisegment, especially if one set of city pares has abnormally cheap M can actually drive the M fare price down.

flymonthly

Since it's an international flight, it's Z class.

davisew

V is for complimentary Medallion upgrades.

If the OP is trying to burn miles, they need to be looking for availability in G on the domestic segments and Z on the international.