3Cforme

Other carriers take advantage of breakage - miles that expire without being redeemed. Delta might like to get its deferred revenue, but, directly to your earlier question, this promo isn't going to have any meaningful impact on the number of SkyMiles outstanding. They're filling Business class seats in a slow period. They get a chance at collecting change fees (and higher redemption prices on the rebookings). They create a little redemption excitement in a very small user base.

emag_eh7

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Any routing is fine, but I don't see anything at 98k that works with our schedules. (Generally, leaving SEA Saturday, returning following Sunday)

TommyD2

Sorry for not checking thread earlier. I changed a bunch of times (well, the Mrs did ) Going to AMS in April.

Also had BRU and MAD ticketed at one point. All one-stop from MKE.

EDIT. Still seeing AMS wide open for April. I figure if you can get to AMS you can get to just about anywhere in Europe on KLM in a couple of hours.

Edit #2 : BRU from MKE if you return on April 12 (Friday). And a couple options for MAD (2-stop).

Only looked at April.

jdrtravel

Sundays are generally hard. If you can make a weekday work it will help a lot.

emag_eh7

Surprisingly, the return flight on Sunday is still available for 89k in D1. Its the SEA-AMS on Saturday that is gone.

Alright, maybe not that surprising, as I'm sure that Sunday is just slightly harder than Saturday. But still.

btonkid12345

Don't give up. Inventory is constantly changing.

Did you check every west coast city for your departure? PDX, SFO, SAN, LAX, etc.

Some of these other origin points may connect to another transatlantic with 98K availability.

It would be worth a $50 positioning flight to another west coast city to make it work! The fare allows open jaws, so you could still combine it with your return back to SEA.

sdadept

we took advantage of it. 98k slc-lon-slc each. love it!

pulpfiction78

It definitely seems worth re-checking availability, and perhaps also using phone support to help.

So, my goal for this was that I could get 167k miles back and spend an extra $500 cash (for an additional $1,800 towards my 2020 MQD goal). I called support, low and behold what I wanted to do was very straightforward and a lovely agent spent about 20 minutes to reconfigure my itinerary. So now I have the exact same SEA-AMS-SEA itinerary in Feb/Mar where I paid full fare (work covers almost half) to work on my MQD, and my wife's D1 cost 98k + $48 in fees (instead of $1,200 + 130k).

pulpfiction78

This is probably obvious, but I'm guessing part of reason for inventory constantly changing especially today is for 24hr cancelation window?

btonkid12345

I see how you got 130K miles back from your wife's previous rez - where did the extra 37K come from to make 167K? And why did you spend an extra $500

Great to hear that they took care of your wife's ticket and saved you $$ and miles!

This, combined with them perhaps opening new inventory, held awards being released, etc. They only do a sale like this max 1x/year.

pulpfiction78

First, let me preface this by admitting that in 2018 I became lightly addicted to TATL D1 during business trips.. That typically does not bode well with the wife when she doesn't get to enjoy. lol (is there a D1 anonymous??)

So, 2 weeks ago I booked a biz/vacation trip with my wife SEA-AMS-SEA. All in about $2,460 cash (K fares) and 260,000 for the D1 upgrade. When I book alone I'm OK with paying full fare as long as D1 is say $2,500-3,000 which seems typical for my common route. Adding the wife, this becomes a much higher out of pocket expense as my work only covers about half of mine.

With the adjusted itinerary today, my cash cost became about $3,120 for my ticket and taxes+fees for wife ticket (or $660 as the number, not $500). I received a 260,000 milage credit and instead used 98,000 for my wife's portion. My original math was again slightly off, resulting in a net positive of 162,000 miles back to me.

The reason I am OK with the cash is that to me it is worth the added expense to reach DM. I have enjoyed using 2 of my 4 GUC's this year (100% success rate so far, crossing fingers).

Something that is a bit confusing, is that Delta had yet to deduct my 260,000 miles for the first purchase on November 1st nor did I ever receive any receipt for that.. They did say it would take a few weeks to show up.

btonkid12345

So you made yours a paid J ticket for about $660 more than the 2 Y RTs? Nice!

Totally get it now. The agent didn't charge your wife any fees? Was it a full refund of her fare to original form of payment, or a credit in a voucher good for a year?

Weird about the 260K receipt - I've only done mileage upgrades twice. Once it showed up immediately and all was good. The second time it didn't show up that day and never showed up later. In this latter case, the check in agent took a few to issue the BPs, but a few clicks of the keyboard and I was all set...

pulpfiction78

Correct, I took the opportunity to transfer my ticket to paid J. The agent waved any change fees. Only downside I see is that my wife's ticket was returned as a credit, not a refund to my card. Agent did not state it had an expiration but I need to check on that. Regardless, I intend to use it next year anyway.

So, is it possible my original mileage upgrade would never have used my miles?

btonkid12345

Her credit will expire 1 year from the original issue date of the ticket - it doesn't need to be used, but only rebooked, by then.

It is possible - but others with more mileage UG experience should comment. Was your ticket even reissued into OY class? It should happen, at latest, by that stage.

BTW - mine was for 12.5K - not 260K - one would think the latter would warrant more attention, but who knows.

daloosh

Well, I was pleased that when they did this promotion last year it was also 98K miles R/T, and the price didn't go up.
However, I recall looking at additional available cities last year, and I feel like there are less cities available now, like Athens and Rome don't seem to be on sale.