I want to go to South Africa , 3 seats, BE. Completely flexible january through April. Want to stay about 10 days and get it for low award.

Preferred departure point JFK but could deal with BOS, BWI etc etc. I don't want 15 hour lay overs . Spent an hour and saw nothing and even when Low awards are shown, they are not there when selected. (typical useless Dumb Delta)

Any suggestions on routing , other airlines etc etc etc would be appreciated.

call medallion line. they will fine seats!

Routing via AMS or CDG - on AF or KL metal

You should know that if you want to redeem miles at low levels, you have to redeem on partners :P

Call the line like the previous poster suggested, but be prepared for a Europe connection - and 10-12 hours in either hub...

Before calling, sign up for a free FlyingBlue account and search on airfrance.us. Any classic award should be bookable with DL miles, albeit at the DL mileage rate (but likely with lower taxes/fees).

Oh well I was hoping for something brilliant? LOL. But I guess same old story, if you want to use useless Sky Pesos at a fair rate you have to hope a partner will take you and of course that usually means ridiculous layovers etc.

I know its an old tune but it took me exactly 5 minutes to find many choices on CO/UA for 125,000 miles each. Even if I find something with DL partners it will be at least 140,000 miles and the flights will suck where as the CO/UA flights were normal connections.

DL finally made up my mind for me. I will find a way to use my 700,000 miles and then DL has lost a Platinum customer for good.

I will give my business to an airline that rewards it's customers with capacity for miles.

And before the usual defenders jump in here with well up grades are so great for Domestic flights, I have exactly the same success this year with upgrades on UA/CO as I do with DL.

At some point management will have to realize that miles for tickets earned with hard spent money have to be available and not limited to RT in BE at 325,000 miles and up.

On top of that they will have to realize it is time to provide a search engine that does the job it is supposed to instead of receiving the name DUMB from all its customers.

A quick check on af.us finds some availability on AF and KL metal in February (picked that month at random). JFK to/from JNB with layovers under three hours in each direction.

Comments about DL's atrocious award booking engine are spot on, but don't make blanket statements about the unsuitability of booking awards on partners, as the situation is not so dire as you make it out to be. I just got LHR-ICN-MEL (KE) and SYD-KUL-LHR (MH) in December (high season for Oz) on the exact dates I wanted with 3-ish hour layovers in each direction with pretty much no effort (other than needing to call).

Good luck in your move to UA/CO. We'll see how great CO's engine is once UA's *net-blocking gurus get involved.

AF A380 from JFK-CDG then AF 77W on CDG-JNB.

10-14 hour connection through CDG.

Thanks for the tip to use the AF search engine instead of useless DUMB. I will try that. As far as United goes I found those same good seats on both UA and CO search engines, so not sure what you think the problem is with UA.

The whole point being I don't have to use a partners search engine with CO/UA and then make multiple calls until I find someone at DL that knows how to search for and Book partner awards .

I just do it in minutes on the Airlines search engine that I gave my business to.

Now there is a thought give your customers a search engine that works. Is taht too much to ask???

If you're interested in other airlines, and feeling really adventurous you could go for something like JFK-FRA (LH), FRA-BRU (LH), BRU-LAD (SN), LAD-JNB (SA) and try out SN, apparently their product is very nice.

Nice rant but as a PM you must know the delta game. I book 3 tickets for 2 each year in BE to Sweden for 100k each never a mile more. My connections are perfect. Yes I have flexible days but that is it. Sorry all you have to do is use the delta.dumb search and look for 1 way awards for the days you want and then call the medallion desk and feed them those over the pond slots and they do the rest.

Let us know next year if UA is all you hope it to be will you

PS if you do not want to do the work there are good FT'er who will do all the booking work for you and low level and just get you want you want (for a small fee)

Ben@
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/onemil...ed-award-help/

or

Gary@
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/viewfromthewing/

Actually I don't have to wait to let you know. I have been flying substantial miles on UA for 2 years as well as DL to Asia almost exclusively Bangkok.

I find no discernible difference in the Economy product. Food sucks on both. I find the seats on UA 777 to be more comfortable but thats just a personal opinion. Service is the same completely dependent on the crew you get that day. Connections are the same and my upgrades on Domestic portions are the same.

Since I am spending my own money, DL has gotten about 1/2 my business because of price at the time and my stupid belief that eventually DL management would treat its good customers like NW did for years.

But that is evidently not going to happen. DL search engine continues to be a joke and 1/2 as good as the old NW search engines. Availability of low tier awards is horrendous on DL and can be made up for sometimes on partners but still a joke compared to CO/UA.

I have to admit that the roll over and ease of earning miles kept me as a DL customer for an extra year. But in my opinion the miles are useless for International awards in BE when compared to CO/UA and the Star alliance.

I have waited patiently for DL to improve its search engine and availability of awards . It has not . CO/UA has a far superior search engine and the availability of low level awards is far better and easier to obtain.

I will be Platinum through 2012 and will attempt to use my 700,000 miles judiciously and once in awhile will fly DL but they have lost most of my business going forward and the sad thing is , they don't care.

Keep in mind you can turn those miles into cash if you want and be done with delta and buy $100 AMEX cash cards for 11k each. $6300 in pocket money!

https://marketplace.delta.com/reward...RewardId=17924

Sorry, but Continental is DEFINITELY not all roses. Yes, it took me 5 minutes to find a flight to South Africa but it took me 6 HOURS to actually get it ticketed on the phone because when I went to purchase it online, it kicked out an error at the last step. Sorry, I will deal with Delta any day over what I have been through with Continental this week. This included the final stage when I was to have received the ticketing e-mail today only to sign on and find they cancelled my return ticket which stopped the ticketing process! Another hour on the phone to get that fixed. Yes, Delta has problems, but the grass is definitely not always greener!

Basic P&L logic, agreed to by any persons with P&L knowledge:

DL makes no more money on the top or bottom line by forcing passengers to play "games" with them. All smart customers, since there are so many options out there...even for those living in ATL, simply don't play the game unless they like mindless games that niether they nor DL gain anything from.

There's no excess pleasure whatsoever to using DL miles versus WN, SQ, CO, AA, BA, LH, OZ, KE, AS or CO miles, so the "game" with DL is truly a pointless and hapless endeavor.

On the AA forum the Mods just move all new threads about lack of saver award availability (and the fewer polite requests for help) into a consolidated thread. It allows people willing to learn from FT to look in one place for suggestions, and keeps people unwilling to learn from sucking all the oxygen out of the forum.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...solidated.html