Finding the cheapest flight?
 

Hi all,

I have planned my travel through the end of the calendar year, and it looks like I will have 28 flight segments through Delta in 2017, just one round trip short of silver status (alas, I did not realize using miles to book tickets does not count toward qualifying segments until it was too late). I'm thinking it may be worth it to find the cheapest round trip ticket I can in order to hit 30 segments. To keep it as low-cost as possible, it would ideally be all on one day, so I don't have to pay for a hotel or other travel costs. My question is two-fold: (1) is this the best way to make it to silver status, and (2) do you have any suggestions for how to find a very cheap one-day round-trip ticket? If it helps, I am based in Atlanta. Appreciate any help you can provide!

Use Google Flights which will show you a map of all destinations and there fares.(You can tell it to only show DL flights) A question I have for you is how many MQDs do you have? If you don’t have a MQD waiver than have you should make sure that you will have enough MQDs to qualify for Silver.

Yes and how many MQMs do you have? It might make more sense to try to qualify on the basis of MQMs. Also, if it's close, it could make sense to try to have your additional trip give you as many MQMs as possible for rollover.

If you haven't booked all your flights yet, you should be able to book an indirect routing somewhere to get the extra segments. If you have booked everything, then a schedule change should allow you to add the segments for free.

As an aside, if you have a DL credit card, you can do pay-with-miles which does allow you to collect MQM/MQD (although it will generally cost you more miles than an award ticket)

Thank you both. Unfortunately I am nowhere close to qualifying on MQMs. I took a number of very short, very expensive nonstop flights for work that helped me qualify a long time ago on dollars, but didn't help much with miles or segments. All of my remaining trips this year are very short as well. I suppose the downside of living in the Delta hub city is never having any layovers to help with segments.

Of my remaining trips this year, two are personal trips for which I used the basic economy fare, so I can't change them. The other is a business trip, but my company and client will not allow me to book the layover flights, which are more than $300 more than any of the nonstops. So, I think my best option is probably to book the cheapest flight I can find. I had been using Kayak Explore and couldn't figure out a way to get it to my specifications, but I finally figured out how to filter correctly on Google, so thank you for the suggestion!

If space available can try and SDC to connecting flights instead of nonstop. $75 you'd have to pay. However could end up with 1 or 2 extra segments.

True, but the SDC possibilities to add segments (can't change the routing with SDS) will be limited by fare class availability and (if it's enforced) routing rules for the fare which often require nonstops from hubs.