jojojo

Question re whether AF seats ever open up. I'm trying to book in business class DTW - MRU in late November. For a wedding (not mine!), so a little flexible in re days. Called Delta Platinum line and was told one stop in Paris and only 100K in business (good news!) but no seats available. They said I could check back. Which I can do.

Just wondering - is there any chance seats are going to come available? Or is this a hopeless endeavor?

Thanks.

gooselee

I'm confused. The PM desk was able to quote you a fare (in miles), but was not able to ticket it? If there was no inventory, they would not have been able to price it at all.

DL.com does not show anything available in business (though quite a few dates in coach), but when it comes to AF inventory, DL.com often doesn't mean much. Perhaps try HUCA.

jojojo

Thanks for the quick response.

I believe that the desk was able to quote a fare because - they said - all AF business seats are 100K.

What is HUCA?

gooselee

Uhh...maybe that agent has some mysterious table showing all the prices of flights everywhere, but even with the old award charts, 100K doesn't make any sense.

Partner awards (used to) all price as Level 1 awards. Based on the archived chart here (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...ard-chart.html), a partner award to Africa would be 140k RT, or 160k RT if MRU is included in the "South Africa" region.

Even if they were doing additive pricing, a low-level RT USA-Europe is 125k, and then the partner flights from Europe to MRU would be in addition to that. Unless we're talking one-way pricing, in which case you're likely getting 62.5k for the TATL and then the other 37.5k for CDG-MRU. But even that makes no sense as I believe CDG-Africa flights in J on AF cost quite a bit more than 37.5k.

In short - I wouldn't trust an agent quoting you a fare for flights that aren't even bookable, especially with DL's new dynamic pricing. I would recommend Hang Up, Call Again to get another opinion and shot at finding flights.

takhliq1

After trying for several days unsuccessfully, i finally gave up. In the meantime the seats that were open from DTW to MCT were gone. Started looking at other options from JFK. Got real lucky yesterday as several business class seats opened up on AF 7 from JFK to CDG and then AF 3884 from CDG to DXG. I grabbed 5 of them as quickly as i could for December 21. I will just have to drive to New York.

tmontemb

Anyone have any idea what happened to all of the VA award space? LAX-SYD nonstop on Virgin Australia was available at low 80k in J nearly all dates as of a few weeks ago, YET it has now disappeared.

WHAT IS GOING ON!

2Tall4Y

Complete shot in the dark (and likely wrong), but QF opened up a new SFO-SYD route and OW members snapped up all the award space in a day. I'm guessing many people were only able to get J one-way and are booking the other segment using only logical/available choice: VA via Delta via AMEX MR.

FWIW, plenty of availability available in May so it could also just be peak season bookings?

tmontemb

That is actually quite logical. Didn't know much about the QF space and gave up looking through the calendar out to February.

I see all of May as well.

Thanks for calming me down.

vip66

I've been having some really tough time pricing my award tix. It's a bit convoluted itinerary, 8 segments:

ewr-vs-lhr-kl-ams-az-fco-az-beg

and back the same way. No connection >24h, satisfies MPM.

All segments show as available in Y. So RT should be 60k. However, when they price it, it prices as a bunch of OWs or nested RTs at 105k.

I spoke with reservations, reservations supervisor, international manual desk, over 1h on the phone. They all gave me different reasons, initially vague. Final word from the manual desk was that the segments cannot be combined into a RT because different airlines' "markets are not combinable". I asked her to explain to me what this really means but got another vague answer here.

This is becoming very frustrating. Any clues what they may be referring to here?

bgriff

If this were AA, you would be running into their established rule that the longhaul carrier in your itinerary has to publish a fare on the routing you are trying to book. If DL had that same rule, this would clearly be illegal, because VS certainly doesn't publish a fare on this routing.

DL doesn't specifically have that same rule, and DL's rules have always been a bit more opaque anyway (especially lately), so it's hard to say exactly where you are going wrong. But, three connections for a medium-haul (by global standards) flight is certainly a bit excessive.

If this were many other carriers, you might also have problems since VS is not a SkyTeam partner, and many airlines will let you create an award with as many alliance partners as you want, but do not allow you to mix non-alliance partners on the same award (sometimes non-alliance partners have to be by themselves on an award, or sometimes you can mix the "home" carrier with a single non-alliance partner, but no more). DL has never officially had this rule, and sometimes DL.com even proactively offers up VS-SkyTeam award routings (I have seen AZ LIN-LHR, VS LHR-JFK pop up) so in theory it is possible for them to do such awards, but between the alliance-non-alliance crossover and the numerous connections you may be hitting some sort of wall.

All that said, since this is still a reasonably direct routing, if a convoluted one, and since Delta has never had especially strict rules about award routing, it is possible you could find an agent willing to do some sort of manual override to issue the ticket at the theoretical 60K price if you hang up and call again enough times. But that could be a lot of work, since on each repeated try you are going to have to humor the first agent long enough for them to reach out to the manual ticketing desk (and possibly other desks along the way), and hope eventually to get a really motivated agent at manual ticketing (whom you likely won't even be able to talk to directly, so you will have to depend on the first-line agent to make your case to them).


Are you trying to take advantage of this routing to get some overnight "quick visits" to a few cities, or was this legitimately the most direct/cheapest way you could find to get where you want to go? If you actually just want to get to BEG surely there is an easier way. Keep an eye on AZ awards direct to FCO from JFK; they are reasonably generous with seats if booked in advance.

vip66

Thanks for the detailed reply!

I thought this could be the case as well. On the other hand, a few days back I booked one trip where VS and AZ were combined (initially had issues, then manual desk fixed it). It could be the KL here.


Yes, aiming for the lowest mileage and fees. Unfortunately, this is also for Aug'15 travel, so that's another issue. DL lowest bucket seats are long gone on NYC-FCO (and even when they had them, only 2 max were showing up). AZ basically the same for this route.

Ultimately, I really just want to understand the rules. It boggles me when reps give vague answers and keep repeating them.

MVF Trekker

Are you currently able to redeem DL miles on VA? There are some domestic flights within AU and NZ that I'm interested in but none show available online through DL.

pjs

Reposting on here in case this helps anyone:

I attempted to book a lowest tier biz class SkyMiles award from ATL-SVO using VS and SU connecting at LHR. When my date (next June) opened up 331 days out, the award was showing as available at DL.com, but would not allow me to book it. A call to the online service center indicated that it was the Aeroflot segment that had not been opened up yet and the agent was unsure why it was showing as available when he could not book it either. They apparently called SU. He said that SU said that the award seats were not available yet, to which I replied "that's fine, then just don't make it available to book on DL.com."

This morning (7 hours later), I just tried again on DL.com and lo and behold, I was able to book my award seats. Perhaps the call to DL (and in turn to SU) got someone to release the seats? These are a pretty good deal. VS UC to LHR and SU lie-flat Biz to SVO.

Dieuwer

It seems that "taxes and fees" not only depend on the route you take, but also on the plane you fly.

For example: BOS-CDG-JNB leaving 6/15/2016.

Option 1: AF333/AF990 = 80,000 miles + $46.00
Option 2: AF321/AF990 = 80,000 miles + $31.50

michael_v

By doing a quick search on matrix, it seems the culprit is the French International Passenger Service Charge (QX) tax:

AF 321:
French International Passenger Service Charge (QX) $17.10

AF 333:
French International Passenger Service Charge (QX) $31.60

I have no idea why.