Award vs Paid ticket
 

Hey Gang,

Back in Feb I got my dad a business award ticket to Greece. I paid 270,000 Miles and $146.70 USD for a milk run.

YVR-SEA-AMS-ATH
ATH-JFK-SEA-(YVR paid Alaska ticket)

But that being said, KLM has a sale on business class seats for $3299 CAD with this routing.

YVR-CDG-ATH
ATH-CDG-MSP-YVR

I was wondering, should I cancel my award ticket and buy the seat.

Any suggestions?

It's a close call. CDN$3299 = US$2650 <yikes, I didn't realize that the exchange rate was so much different from 1:1>. Your 270,000 miles are worth a minimum of $2700 (by using pay with miles, for example), plus you paid about $150 in fees. However, the cancel/redeposit fee is $150 (except for PM and DM).

Did you already purchase the AS one way flight at the end? If so, can you get a credit to use for a different trip?

The purchased ticket would have a slightly better routing, but different aircraft types (no 1-2-1 direct aisle access seating or no true flat beds?) could overcome this advantage, as could schedule details, specifically arrival and departure times as well as connecting times. (No details were given and I'm not going to look up this information for the OP.)

2600$ seems like a good price for a J ticket covering that distance, and 270,000 miles seems like wayyyy too many for an award ticket.

If you didn't already have the ticket, it would be a no-brainier, but I think I might eat the change fee still (depending on the cost of the AS ticket).

We can think of the refund of fees on the award ticket as just about covering the cancel/redeposit fee.

Also, we didn't consider whether dad could use some MQMs and RDMs on DL or some other SkyTeam program. Of course, the value of the miles won't matter if they're going to be orphaned, but this trip would come close to a domestic coach RT award ticket and would be more than enough for a low one way award ticket.

Fees x2 - Delta award redeposit + AS cancellation.

270,000 is a lot of miles to have paid for a TATL trip in the first place. If one would pay CAD $3299 for a J ticket, I'd probably redeposit the miles and try to get 2 TATL round trips out of them.

I asked whether the OP has already purchased the AS one way ticket and what it's refund conditions might be, but the OP has not responded.

just my 2 cents' but YVR to CDG is on AF and it isn't that good, they have 2-3-2 seating so way different then going through seattle and taking DL 1-2-1 if you find a better routing on the outbound though, def better to use cash IMO.

and little thing I have no idea when are you suppose to fly but i suppose still some time away. AS let you get credit voucher for NO fee if it is longer then 30 days or something away from the day of departure instead of DL charging you a change fee so you can eliminate that cost and use it some other time :)

and you can always persuade them telling them now you wanna pay for your ticket and i am sure a supervisor may waive the fee for you since they gonna make more cash

I think the sale tickets might need to be purchased through KLM, but that's just a guess. The routing looks like all AF and DL operated segments.

I've asked but we don't even know whether the OP has already purchased the AS ticket.