I got the "published fare" rule straight from the horse's mouth when I was on the phone with a Delta rep while booking my itinerary. She put me on hold for 20 minutes and supposedly had an extensive conversation with the "fare desk" or something about why my award was coming out at 85K rather than 60K. Turns out it was because I was not going through either of the two connections that were published from origin to destination.

The lesson I am learning from this is that there is absolutely no way to know if an award trip with stopovers is bookable until you call and see if the individual Delta rep will book it for you or not. So far no one has proposed a definitive ruling on stopover allowance. I do not mean that statement to be insulting, but rather to highlight that there is no rule to follow when building an itinerary, no way to know with certainty whether an itinerary is valid until one calls and tries to book it.

In a very real sense I think you are right. And the rule is "If you don't get the answer you want, call back." It helps to do a lot of reading, like you have done, with examples. Realizing that routing oneself via YUL makes me realize "Can I also do it via YYZ" or similar questions.

With my SIT example, the rep told me a) it was not possible to book the AS flight I needed and b) the stopover in SIT was raising the mileage needed. In fact, neither was correct. The online support department figured out how to book the AS flight I needed (to keep my connection in SEA <4 hours) and I knew once that was fixed my stopover in SIT on the return would price out at just 25K miles.

I think there is a definitive rule on stopover allowances, but the problem -- as you note -- is that finding out the "valid routing" is a bit of a challenge, and if you don't know the valid routing then you don't know if you can stopover there or not.

It seems like there should be an easily-accessible resource for this on Delta.com whereby for any given city pair, one can see the valid routing/connection cities for travel between those two airports.

But that would make it way too simple.

Just like clearly stating in the fare rules whether a fare is refundable or not, which is also quite obscure.

Thank you for your helpful replies. At least we can be definitive on the fact that it is not definitive. :D

So, perhaps a safely worded rule is that "A stopover can definitely occur at any city that is part of a published route (online) from the origin to the destination in either direction. However, in certain cases, other cities can also be used as stopovers. These 'other cities' must be confirmed as valid by a Delta representative at the time of booking".

For international travel, the rule basically amounts to stay with in the MPM. We did troubleshoot a situation recently where someone was trying to get to somewhere in Scandinavia and DL had an MPM that was absurdly close to the great circle mileage (like within 50 miles or something equally crazy), meaning that routing was only legal via one DL hub (DTW, iirc). KL publishes routings listing where connections (formally called transfers in the routing/fare rules) can occur, so I encouraged that poster to try to persuade the DL agent to use the KL routing rules on an exceptional basis, since DTW-AMS (or vv) wasn't available on his required date but plenty of other US-AMS flights were.

As to thepointsguy's BCN-CDG-YUL-JFK, how it's legal is very simple. The mileage is 4301 and the MPM is 4592. Doesn't matter that the routing doesn't make perfect sense.

Finally, relative to the question of whether transfer locations make a difference in resetting the MPM, the answer is no and I think that's pretty unequivocal. You've got an origin and destination, and the transfer points create the segments that contribute to the cumulative miles. About the only way you can make clever use of a transfer point is to basically make it the destination if that buys you more MPM. Of course, with only one stopover allowed, you'll have issues leveraging such an event, but maybe an open jaw could come into play. For domestic awards, it seems that routing rules are (usually) off the table, as long as there exists a published routing, you can probably book something that's not really indirect even if it's not the officially sanctioned routing. This winter we had the unfortunate situation of someone who wanted to fly between two cities for which DL had destroyed all valid routings by making one of those cities served only from ATL, and the only published routing was via MEM. Thus, the award was pricing out as two round-trips, both with ATL as one of the end points. (Revenue tickets were also pricing that way because of the stupid routing rule.)

I would have to respectfully disagree with the above. You cannot stop in any cities you desire as long as they are within the MPM. Certain (most) cities are not allowed because they are not part of a published route. I experienced this problem first-hand.

There appear to be two general rules that must be met when booking stopovers:

1) Total trip must be within MPM limit (or +5% or whatever. Delta does not seem to be overly anal about this).

2) Stopovers cannot occur in most cities. Can definitely occur in cities that are part of published fare between origin and destination. May be possible in other cities but depends on what agent says.

Here is a simple example: You can't go NYC - Moscow - Athens on SkyTeam with a stopover in Moscow, at least not on one single award booking. This is because Moscow is not a valid stopover between NYC and Athens as it is not part of a published fare. I guess a rebellious ticketing agent might allow it, but it should not be expected. Let's also assume for the sake of the example that this trip is within MPM limits.

The reason the Scandinavian flight you mention was allowed was because AMS is a legal stopover between NYC and some Scandinavian city. The MPM issue is quirky and can be circumvented because other published fares have a greater miles traveled. You can always find an alternative, and if you prove it to Delta, they increase the allowable MPM. But the stopover you chose (AMS), was still inherently a legal SkyTeam stopover for this flight. You would not be able to connect through Rome for example, even if you were hypothetically within the MPM.

I would be inclined to disagree, actually, for the simple reason that DL's routing rules for international travel are almost exclusively based on MPM. Find me a DL fare (not a KL fare) for US-EU that lists the routing other than MPM and ticketed point deductions. That makes it impossible to determine what falls within a published fare. If DL.dumb supported more partners, it might be possible to test this theory out, but with just DL, AF, KL, AS, and HA, I'm not sure I can come up with a good example. The one I'd like to try is

BOS-DL/AF-CDG-AF/KL-AMS-KL-OSL-OK-PRG-OK-ZAG

to address yesterday's example. EF reports:

Results from ExpertFlyer.comNote that this cuts out your proposed backtracking through AMS, which I think was what was causing the system to have fits. Using the TPDs, that should be a valid routing, allowing a stopover in OSL.

Interesting. Not what the Delta Agent said but of course I can't take her word at face value.

Geez, you just opened up another can of worms that we thought was closed. :D

Most agents probably aren't going to say "over the maximum permitted mileage" unless they think you know what they'll mean. It seems their computer doesn't give them very good information when it doesn't like what they've requested, which makes it hard for them to give a solid answer. I think every city that's on a valid MPM string of flights (where the flights actually exist) is part of a published routing between the origin and destination if there are no published routings.

Sorry for opening up that can of worms, but I am incredibly curious if it would work. I'd love for a bored PM/DM with an EF subscription to see if that routing could be made to work.

what about SU?

well done, mtkeller. ^

NYC-SU-MOW-SU-ATH is a valid routing. Interestingly, it exceeds the MPM that DL and SU list for NYC-ATH, according to EF. Would be interesting to see if that could be gotten with DL miles, since the routing is valid for the ST member operating the flights but over DL's MPM. (Although it's within 5%, so it might be in that wiggle room some have had success with.)

So maybe it really is an MPM issue exclusively after all.

Indeed, there is no such thing as a "layover", and the cumulative TPM of all connections (and stopovers) counts toward the MPM (if the MPM principle is used).

Connections "scheduled by the airline" concept only applies to the Routing principle (in which case the MPM does not apply).

• http://Help.KVSTool.com/#MPM
• http://Help.KVSTool.com/#TPM
• http://Help.KVSTool.com/#Q44
• http://Help.KVSTool.com/#Routing_Rules

It does.

When a Routing-based validation is used, the MPM does not apply:

[KVS Availability Tool 6.3.0.R1/Diamond - Routing Rules: NYC-ATH/SU/LHPX/650 USD]

That's what I expected. I guess the question is if you're booking a DL award on SU metal, does SU's published routing work, or does DL's MPM determine what's legal?