WesTraveller

Hello everyone, long time lurker, first time posting. I have been with NW and DL for over 10 years, since graduating college.

I have always redeemed my skymiles at the lowest tier or Level 1 tier in business class. But I encountered an issue last week when changing an existing award trip to Asia, FLL-DTW-Asia, where the connection in DTW is 1:10 (not a stopover), but the award pricing came to 95K miles (25K domestic and 70K to Asia). Individually these flights showed R fare and O fare. This was booked over the phone and I was talking to an agent in the International Reissue desk. She had no clue why it was pricing as a broken fare, but she insisted she must do what the computer tells her. I was not going to waste my time to HUCA, instead I insisted to speak with a supervisor. In the end the supervisor honored the 70k mileage pricing.

Has anyone else been seeing this? Could this be part of the new dynamic award pricing or some sort of married segment logic? I am doubtful of the married segment logic, because both segments would show the higher tier or level pricing (i.e. RK and OK).

Btw, I thank you all in advance as I've learned a great deal reading from this forum over the years!!

javabytes

Could easily be married segment logic. Individually they might price as low. Together they might price as medium. You might be quoted the broken fare if that is lower than the Medium price.

WesTraveller

That was my first thought, however when I priced out on Delta.com FLL-DTW-Asia, it also priced it at 70K miles, however I had to call, because the return is on a partner carrier and I could not change the reservation online.

I just thought this was strange and wondering if anyone else has ever seen this.

CPMaverick

I've seen this many times trying to price to Asia and Australia. I don't understand all the reasons, but it seems very easy to 'break' the system, and agents don't seem to be able to override it. Consider yourself lucky to have gotten the proper award pricing honored, I was never successful.

flyerCO

DL seems to be having problems with the phone agents system and reservations with partner connections in Asia. I spent two hours on the phone today trying to change a reward ticket return to be SYD-LAX connecting through PVG with SYD LAX on MU. The phone agent could clearly see the 80s business class ticket online when I had them look. However their phone system kept breaking t fare at PVG and pricing Australia to China and China to US . Even with phone call to ticketing help desk they couldn't get their system to price correctly. According to ticketing help desk theyve c seen the issue before, but didn't know it could be done using the online system. They waived the change fee for redepositihg my miles and apologized for not being able to correctly manually charge the correct mileage. They were truly stumped as to why they couldn't get it to do a manual price override.

WesTraveller

Thanks for the responses, and I agree with you CPMaverick, I've seen this happen before with an Australia award ticket, but I thought that was a one time hiccup, lol. In the future, I would recommend you guys speak with a supervisor in the International Reissue Desk, they seem to be sharp and know how to fix this issue.