MSPDeltaDude

Yes, they will prorate the fee. You will get cert at next renewal of annual fee.

FT-hss

Question: Why am seeing many days available in 'O' (saver biz) class on Expertflyer, but only about 10% of them match on DL.com?

Question 2: Should a biz class from India to US price at 70K if all legs are in single letter 'O' or 'R' class? How do I lead the call (with what phrases) so that I can get ST to do it right. I am seeing 70K connections up to ATL/DTW (O) and then couple of 25K (R) legs from DTW to PHX.

I think last time I tried to talk to an agent (non-ST most probably), I got stung by the "only 1 available/now SOL" feature.

pgh234

DL recently "enhanced" their award availability to only allow booking via married segment logic. Individual DL legs with O or R availability may (in many cases now) not be able to be combined into a single itinerary. My recent example was PIT-DTW and DTW-ICN available in low...but PIT-ICN was not available. The good ole' days of piecing together segments is long gone.

brocklee9000

Good to know, I've been trying to find this answer for a while. So along the lines of jonboy, if I upgrade my Plat to Reserve tomorrow, I'll get a prorated AF, and it won't reset my certificate/account date, i.e. Y cert issued last October and I can still use it up through October of this year, at which point the next Reserve AF will hit and I'll be issued the F companion certificate?

JayTeaBee

Always successful with my certs (I hold both the DL Plat Amex & the DL Reserve). Recently my Reserve FC trip encountered a schedule change. I called the PM line and they quickly changed the flights I asked for instead. So far I have really enjoyed this benefit.

FlyerBeek

Correct. This matches my recent experience too (as document3ed above). It makes no difference that the 14hr international segment has O availability - DL will still charge an additional 25k+ miles for that 45min domestic segment with regular R availability. Married availability seems to work slightly better when using DL on the international segment, but good luck finding availability that doesn't require literally hundreds of thousands of miles for a single DeltaOne segment.

-FlyerBeek

gooselee

I've always wondered/been nervous about this, because honestly I think I've seen mixed reports and haven't ever been able to really piece it together.

There may be a timing thing, and I'd love to hear definitive proof of which of the following is true. In certain cases, you could theoretically upgrade just a month or two before your AF renewal, and effectively pay most of the year as a Plat card but then still get a Reserve cert?

- Renew Plat in April, get coach certificate
- Upgrade to Reserve in August, get prorated Plat refund, pay prorated Reserve AF
- Renew Reserve next April, get FC certificate

OR

- Renew Plat in April, get coach certificate
- Upgrade to Reserve in August, get prorated Plat refund, pay full Reserve AF
- Renew Reserve next August, get FC certificate

OR

- Renew Plat in April, get coach certificate
- Upgrade to Reserve in August, get prorated Plat refund, pay prorated Reserve AF
- Renew Reserve next August, still only get Plat certificate b/c didn't hold Reserve for full year

OR

- Renew Plat in April, get coach certificate
- Upgrade to Reserve in August, get prorated Plat refund, pay prorated Reserve AF
- Renew Reserve next August, no certificate because didn't hold either for a full year, wait until following August for FC cert

OR

- Renew Plat in April, get coach certificate
- Upgrade to Reserve in August, get prorated Plat refund, pay prorated Reserve AF
- Get Plat cert next April
- Renew Reserve next August, no certificate because cert anniversary is April
- Finally get FC cert in April 16 mos after upgrade

brocklee9000

You've summed up exactly what was going through my head, but more concisely. I'm okay with paying the prorated rate for Reserve. I just hope it doesn't affect my card date, since I'm upgrading it rather than opening a new line of credit and card number. Now what would be really awesome is if they would upgrade my Y certificate to an F certificate One can dream...

BenA

Correct. If an upgrade occurs while you're using the companion certificate, the gate agent processes it similar to an op-up on an international flight (e.g. you keep your original fare class, and they just assign you a different seat).

We've had really, really good luck with this happening, but that's because we usually only use the companion cert on short routes we don't care about seating on like SEA-LAS or ultra heavy leisure routes like SLC-MCO.

brocklee9000

Really? SLC-MCO is one route I actually considered using my Y certificate on (wife keeps bugging me to take her to Disneyworld/land), but I reconsidered after the C+ announcement several months ago. It seems they fly A320s on that nonstop, how'd you get lucky enough to get two F upgrades?

frudd38

I've been trying to get HND-TSA / TPE-LAX as the 70k one way business price, but online and via agent keeps pricing it as two awards. The Taipei layover is under 24 hours. Is this possible on one award or just useless to keep trying?

gooselee

The airport change may be giving them fits.

I dont have first hand experience booking an award with a coterminal connection, but last year I was booking ATL-JFK-FCO with a 6 hour JFK connection and it took me several weeks of calling and written follow-up before I finally connected with an intl reissue supervisor who was able to force the pricing.

It *should* be allowed, but now that married segments is the norm, agents are less willing to go the manual reissue route as that is seen as overriding the RM pricing algorithms or whatever.

TL;DR - Might be possible to manually price if you get the right combo of helpful agents, but don't count on it and have a backup plan.

EZEDoesIt

I've done HND/NRT without issue, but it was on a revenue ticket.

RealHJ

It should work, as TSA and TPE are valid coterminals (and have worked just fine before as such), and none of these are Dullta flights, so you are not running into "married segment logic" here either.

I suspect it's just the new buggy res system that all too frequently prices each segment individually (like BA Avios).

If you can get someone to put this through the old res system it'll price out fine, but good luck finding a res agent willing and able to do so.

gooselee

The end result is the same (OP will have difficulty booking this), but I would actually tend to think that the all-partner itinerary and married-segment logic are actually causing these issues, in a way.

With DL flights, one might expect DL's systems to price the HND-LAX market and marry the segments at some higher award level, but still price it as a through fare.

With partner flights (or mixed partner/DL flights), that same system is probably searching for a married segment price, not finding it, and then just pricing each leg independently and adding it all together.

Married segments is what the new system looks for in pricing a through fare now, so the lack thereof is forcing the additive pricing. Technically not married segments causing the problem, but the fact that the new system relies so heavily on them.

Either way, this all speaks to the combined issues with DL's new award reservation systems.