flyerCO

Had no issue booking a mixed DL/VA award last month. JFK-LAX-BNE-SYD.

seychellesbound

Did you book online or have to call?

FSUnole03

RealHJ

Makes no sense. If it was no problem booking it, there would be no phone or anything else other than www.dullta.com involved to search, select flight, and complete the booking. The fact that you had to have someone override the system limitation that won't let you book such normal connections anymore is telling... thankfully you got lucky... but sooner or later (likely sooner) your luck will run out. Just saying..

gooselee

I dunno - I've never had success booking on www.dullta.com. Every time I try I end up having to either call or go to www.delta.com.

Joking aside, I hate using mobile websites on my phone and sometimes will call DL (or other companies) to do things I could have done online at a computer. And there are then times where I'm not at a computer and can't talk on the phone, but am perfectly able to text. For all their limitations (and I've called them out on many), DL Twitter is good for certain instances like that. It's one method of many that DL provides, so why not use it when appropriate?

FSUnole03, congrats on your good luck and hope it continues! I've experienced similar "luck" and will happily enjoy it until it runs out, if it ever does.

RealHJ

I'll second that. Continued good luck to both of you, and to everyone else who is able to book things that are now getting increasingly harder to book.

If history is used as a guide, when we're in such a period of "luck" it's normally after policies/systems have changed, but some sympathetic and knowledgeable agents will still help to get things through how it "should" work and how they remember it, so it doesn't last forever (e.g. the WP* coded ticket I had issued using WorldPerks rules a year+ after the massive downgrade to SlyMiles and all having to be SM* coded in the fare calculation; that was great luck, but has not - and probably cannot - happen since then) and DL normally really locks down on it.

I've had both good luck and "bad luck" - a.k.a. not getting things set as it "should" work and having to, for example, book two simple KE connecting in ICN flights separately (though it poses an issue, as given short connection time not enough time to go to transit desk to check into connecting flight). Whenever I get something through how it "should" and "used to" work, I count myself lucky. When not, I just remind myself of how very, extremely dishonest, unethical, immoral and anti-customer DL is an organization, and how it's working so hard to spread that anti-customer attitude to all of its staff (much of them truly great and fantastic, but they're getting their hands tied behind their back). In other words, don't get any personal attachment to any airline. Fly whatever is the best schedule/price/aircraft/etc.

gooselee

100% agree with this part - and it applies to both awards and paid tickets.

I do chuckle whenever someone on FT is bemoaning how things used to be so much better. That very well may be the case, and absolutely the complaints are valid, but I find it far more productive to figure out the best ways to deal with things as they are today. For DL awards, that includes everything from knowing that some Twitter agents can actually price together connecting int'l award tickets to figuring out what parts of an opaque award structure are still visible around the seams (e.g., via fare codes or partner booking sites or something). It's also knowing my friends just found a couple coach tickets to RSW next week for 9k RDM each, roundtrip. That RSW trip is in no way flashy, but you can't tell me that's not a good deal for a trip they had to take at the last minute.

RealHJ

Agreed 100%. Just those of us who know how things used to be (6 months ago, 2 years ago, 5 years ago, ...), when figuring out how to do things the best way possible how it is now, it is impossible to not think of how much easier - and better value - it used to be. It's just practically impossible to separate the two, as the way to "figure out the best ways to deal with things as they are today" is knowing how it used to be and knowing for what to push, how it still "might" be possible to do (exactly as you say, looking at the fare construction, and knowing what "should" be the "correct" fare construction).

sleuth

ArlingtonTraveler

It doesn't show availability BY DESIGN. I believe DL intentionally blocks most KE to KE connections at ICN, all CI to CI connections at TPE, as well as DL to KE connections at NRT. It's part of their strategy to limit expenditures on partner awards and make you spend 300K Skyrubles.

ArlingtonTraveler

Okay, I just tried the Twitter route with no success. Even told only valid connections are paired together...

RealHJ

Exactly. No matter phone or twitter (since when is that a valid booking method anyway? why can't DL simply set-up a secure online chat where the customer is authenticated? ...but anyway), by and large that is what the DL agents will say. What they see is the EXACT same things that dullta.com spits out. It's the same. They are either unwilling or unable (most likely untrained and ignorant, kept so on purpose by Mother Delta, and without access to anything but the HTML dumbed down and extremely buggy UI) to do anything that you can't do on the site, to the extent that it's almost pointless to call nowadays... I mean they even cannot put two connections together and price it additively, as always could be done easily until not long ago. They can just book it as two separate PNRs and tickets, same as you would on the site, and then good luck to you if your incoming flight is late.

To me this seems like DL is doing what UA did on this, just not as hard and impenetrable from day 1 as UA had it, that he connections you see online is what you get, there is no other routing possible, period. Clear case of DL copying UA on that... (the airlines always like to copy each other, in the worst of the worst things, that is)

Sadly though, with UA and with *A there is still plenty of routing, non-UA routing is not suppressed, and the booking engine is robust and comes up with every imaginable connection still. Quite different from what is the sad excuse of the ugly, very hard to use, untested, and just overall poorly designed booking engine that dullta.com uses.

strickerj

flyerCO

It was booked online.

FSUnole03

You're clearly uninformed. DL Twitter agents will not take payment over twitter.com or the Twitter app in the direct messages is what I was told and why she had to call me. Therefore, the agent had to call me to take my credit card info to pay for the taxes/fees for the award ticket. Her calling had ZERO to do with any problem putting the itinerary together. Why do you want to keep arguing this?