Certain Partner J Awards to Europe now 85,000 miles?
 

Apologies if this has been covered before, but it seems like certain partner flights in business class are now 85,000 miles each way between the US and Europe. I noticed this looking at Air France, Virgin and KLM nonstop flights from certain US airports, like IAD and LAX, to CDG, LHR and AMS.

I realize there is no award chart so they can up the mileage whenever they want, but this is pretty painful considering these were just adjusted to 70,000 last summer. Perhaps just a temporary glitch?

What is the date range of your search where you're seeing 85K awards?

I tried a number of search strings in advanced search constrained to the last year and didn't see other posts. Maybe you are the first to post.

It seems to be throughout the calendar. As long as it's a partner flight between the US and Europe in J, I'm seeing 85,000 miles each way.

For example, see May 26 IAD-LHR on Virgin.

It's known that VS prices higher. AF/KL at rates other than 70k one-way would be new.

Edit: sure enough... found CSM850 for LAX-CDG. Also for JFK-CDG, while DL metal remains at 70k (see Feb 2018).

Also seeing this for other partners and regions. LAX-PVG is 80k on DL metal but 95k on MU (also Feb 2018).

Looks like we've arrived at UA-style partner penalty pricing.

VS was pricing at 70k from JFK-LHR earlier this week for me, so that would not be accurate.

Delta just increased all of their partner award travel for flights that do not include any Delta metal. China Airlines LAX-TPE is now 95K but if you tack on a Delta metal flight either domestically or route through PVG on DL it is still 80K.

Looks like same thing United did a year or two ago.

So this is what Delta's IT people were doing yesterday instead of fixing their website, phone line, or app so people could get home.

We are inching closer and closer to 1 Skymile = 1 Cent.
It's mindboggling people still have the AMEX Skypeso Credit Card while they could just have a straight 2% cash back card or generic points card.

Whether it happened all the time or not, there were definitely plenty of reports on VS metal pricing higher than saver pricing on DL metal. We never saw anything like that with other partners until now.

This is ridiculous. How can they raise award miles needed like every 6 months. They just moved US-India in J to 97,500 (highest of any US airline). Now if you do not have DL in one leg of your journey, you pay 120k each way! That is crazy. So JFK-CDG-BOM all on AF is 120k while JFK-CDG-BOM on DL and then AF or 9W is 97,500. As much as I hate EWR & UA, I really need to think about what I will do in 2018. UA's 80k for partner airlines to India is like a steal. AA is even cheaper but its too dependent on EY.

Does a long haul need to be on DL? or just any Delta flight at all? IE if I add SAT-JFK but then fly AF JFK-CDG-JNB does it satisfy the DL flight requirement. If so then this just sounds like a move to stop people from booking low mileage tickets from another city because the DL flight wasn't available from their true origin in low and thus get around additive pricing.

So I'm a little confused. Doesn't the Skyteam JV require that partner flights must price in low? Didn't that effectively limit partner award inventory, namely that it was either available in low or not available at all?

It appears to be any DL flight at all. Random example: DPS-PVG-YYZ (MU/MU) = 95k. Same date, DPS-PVG-JFK-YYZ (MU/MU/DL) = 80k.

Well I saw JFK-YYZ on DL and then YYZ-AMS-BOM on 9W price at 97.5k and not the 120k if all partner so looks like just one segment needs to be DL

http://viewfromthewing.boardingarea....award-pricing/

https://thepointsguy.com/2017/04/del...ards-devalued/

I swear I used to find partner Business Class awards for less than DL.