javabytes

If an award is showing additive pricing, you don't have any way of knowing what availability exists for the married segments, so it's a bit difficult to assume you know what higher award level it should price at. You might see two flights at O and OL and think "why doesn't it just price the entire thing at OL?" But there might only be OD for the two flights together using married segment logic.

lamont2718

I hope the OP knows that the award charts do still exist. http://deltapoints.boardingarea.com/...eference-post/

sbm12

That's a copy of what they were at one point. I'm showing more current data, including quirks like LAX-SYD on VA now pricing at 50,100 in Y, not 50,000. Show me that on the charts somewhere.

lamont2718

Touché. Had been meaning to post about that one... so weird.

paul21

Let me preface by saying I like the idea and don't want to be a detractor. However,

I am not a lawyer and this is not any suggested advice, in fact it is humor or satire: From past experience, that domain name will have to go. SkyMiles is a trademark, and you'll be pursued as a squatter and sued for misleading customers into believing your website represents somehow the official position of SkyMiles (since it is, after all, the same topic and not protected speech). Expect a threatening letter in the mail within a month of registration asking for big bucks and any profit you may have earned (i.e. ad revenue) as a result of the use of the trademark. You may want to consider unlinking that domain to anything before evidence can be collected.

Bob Bixby

Wondered how this fit into the charts...

Was pricing a trip to South Africa this fall and was going to use up a chunk of my miles, (350,000 of them per person, my wife and I and my parents for a retirement trip)

To my surprise, I was no where close to the miles I needed for some of the flights. When I searched the dates I needed I came up with nothing close to 350,000



530,000 miles each, sorry mom and dad!!!

Re ran it for just the wife and I




I guess, as those are the dates I need... I will have to do more research.
But I did save 7,500 miles per passenger by not taking the folks.

The Charts used to say 350,000 was the max.
Without the charts, there is no limits, or "Keep Climbing"

I know what is climbing!!!

sbm12

That is pricing as JFK-ORF + ORF-ATL + ATL-JNB. And it looks like, because of the R or O prefix for domestic F versus international C, that's what Delta meant to do, which sucks.

The OK fare for ATL-JNB should be the 350k r/t. Paying the extra 180k for the domestic hops is ridiculous, but that's how the DL system is processing the "mixed cabin" award right now.

The 7500 point savings comes from the "normal" R availability for 2 seats on ORF-ATL on the outbound.

MSPeconomist

Can you get better results by using multicity? Alternatively, how about putting the domestic portion on a separate award ticket, or even purchasing those flights?

If you call, can an agent force all of the segments into OK/RK inventory to avoid the "broken fares"?

dickerso

Incredible, thanks for doing this!

Hopefully you'll climb in the Google rankings where even normal (non FT) folks ignorant of Delta's chicanery will learn about this ridiculousness.

sbm12

Made some updates to the code this morning which should better show off the variety of rates available. Most significantly is that there are now multiple origin points in the USA for searches which means lots more data points and some of the previously "missing" rates like the 62.5k US-EU in C are now showing up. It is still not a perfect representation of everything, but it is getting closer.

sbm12

And now there is a browser extension available to help feed this SkyMiles award rate data into your search results on the Delta site.

Load up the extension and it adds a line atop the search results page:


It should work on r/t or o/w searches. It will give o/w prices if you do a multi-city search. And I'm pretty sure it is stable, at least it was in all my testing.

Let me know if you run into troubles with it.

n.b. The link above is to my blog or to one which I am a regular contributor. FT rules require that I disclose that in the post.

MSPeconomist

The new numbers in red are the "low" award level miles required for the route? If so, DL must hate this even more than DL hated us being able to see the award charts.

sbm12

They are the lowest numbers I've found for the country pair in question so far. No guarantee that they're the lowest in the market but given the volume of data I have I think they should be in most cases.

I should also note that while numbers may show up for domestic routes the data I've accumulated so far has been focused on international routes, not domestic, so I wouldn't put a ton of faith in any domestic numbers it displays. I might actually turn that off to avoid confusion or misleading info.