Don McK

I'm planning on booking a one-way trip from Tokyo Narita to Seattle. On the Delta site (I'm in the US) the fare comes up in yen. I'm curious as to how this plays out charging to a Delta AMEX card. The dollar has been rising against the yen and some forecasts show that this should continue for a while. Some others are forecasting a sharp decline. Anyone have any experience with this?

Worldtraveler727

It's providing a fare in Yen because the trip originating in Japan. They provide the cost based on the country of origin.

I do this pretty frequently for trips originating out of the EU and paid against my AMEX. Typically AMEX takes whatever the daily US>FOREX conversion rate is and it shows up on your CC bill in USD. If you are subject to a foreign transaction fee, that shows up as a separate line item and is a % of the total purchase.

RumPatrol

Tickets are always priced in the currency of the origin airport, which is why it is in Yen. In terms of charging to Amex, it will show up on your statement as the amount in Yen under the Foreign Spend column, and then converted to USD in the Amount column. I don't believe any of the Delta AmEx cards have a foreign transaction fee so you shouldn't need to worry about that.

The conversion should be done at whatever the rate was at the time of booking the ticket, although it is possible it is not done until it goes from pending to a confirmed charge. Someone else may be able to chime in on the exact timing of when the rate is locked in.

There is no way to get the ticket to price out in USD and I certainly wouldn't play the guessing game on when/if the conversion rate will be most in your favor. Unless you're looking really far in advance, you're more likely to pay more due to fare changes than you would trying to time up the best forex rate.

sydneyracquelle

I have been able to have it priced out in USD by calling the Diamond desk and booking the ticket this way. In fact, the phone agents have no ability to price in other than USD regardless where the flight originates.

maverikbc

Forex is a completely different game from miles&points, so I leave it to experts there, but when I look at 1mo back, USD/JPY hasn't moved more than 2%, which to me just business as usual. Election results made very little impact to my surprise.

I have a good chunk of assets in JPY, it was really strong against CAD back in Apr., but I was greedy and lost the opportunity to change them to CAD. However, I know it's cyclical, so I'll hold it for a while lol. Same goes with gold, I seem to always miss opportunities to sell.

I agree with other posters, I'd also say airfare is a lot more volatile than USD/JPY, I'd say grab it if you think it's a good price, regardless of forex forecast.

It's nice it shows forex fee separately in statements in USA as one poster mentioned. In Canada, it's usually around 2.5% stated in T&C, but on statements, they're never separate, you need to use a calculator, then they usually come +-2.5%. I have amazon.ca Visa which offers no forex fee, but I still get dinged up to 0.5%, because they use Visa's exchange rate, which is always slightly higher than what we see on xe.com.

FYI, ex-Canada tkts are priced and charged in CAD on delta.com, but when I redeemed a o/w reward tkt from Mexico to Canada, delta.com was showing fees in USD, not in MXN and I was charged accordingly.

flyerCO

If you call DL in US, they'll bill in USD. Otherwise online purchases will be in local currency of 1st departure airport.

aquamarinesteph

I have booked flights on Delta which originated in other countries. So far, it has always showed me the approximate $$$ amount in comparison to the local currency.

CPMaverick

Yep, as an ex-pat exchange rate means a lot to me and many others.

If anyone could reliably predict currency fluctuations, they'd be a billionaire. You typically see forecasts going both ways. And sometimes when everyone agrees, they still end up wrong.

I wouldn't worry about it. The airfare could change a lot more than the exchange rate will.

frankflieslots

call DL and buy the tix directly or else it gets pretty messy when you try to change your ticket later.

WorldLux

You can work around it by changing the point-of-sale. The inventory may change though and the air fare may not necessarily be available from every point-of-sale.

Slawth

Not awfully messy, but that's a good idea.

DeltaFan4Now

If only fares for flights ex-EU would be constructed in the manner of the country of residence of the passenger (i.e. low to no YQ)

FireEmblemPride

Not true. I've gotten the US DM line to debit in Yen in the past. It's just not something they're used to doing.

WhiskeyBravo

This ^
The phone agents in the USA by default ticket in USD. It is actually possible for them to quote the tickets in other currencies though -- it's just that no one knows how to do it anymore. I used to do this back in the day when foreign currency transaction fees were a thing.