Bowgie

I agree with the suggestion. I booked two SAN-FRA tickets at sale price with good connections on A321's and A330's in October. I also booked a separate ticket for just myself in mid-December. Great time for Christmas markets! There is mid-week availability in October and first two weeks of December.

Bowgie

I've only noticed cash sales on dates with low business travel demand such as after Thanksgiving, early December, and after Christmas. Even then, those were sales with Air France and KLM as code-share options. Delta likes to dump seats on dates and routes with soft demand with these rare mileage redemption sales. Delta is less likely to trigger fare wars by dropping prices with their "funny money" instead of real money.

Short answer is "Delta does not have deeply discounted cash sales on Delta One." However, look at SEA-Flyer's posts a few up. He has specific recent fare examples that contradict what I said.

desafino

140k amex mr to europe rt J is not unicorn pricing by any means - that's just two *A saver legs booked via aeroplan. some of these routings might be more efficient or have much better availability (plus they earn mqm and mqd), and if you already have some of the skymiles you need I think it's a decent deal. for example, i see tons of availability on the DL JFK-ZRH nonstops, but LX saver space on the same route tends to be pretty hard to find.

xliioper

DL coordinates TATL fares with AF/KL and also participated in these seasonal sales around holidays and late summer when business travel is slow. They had fairly heavy advance purchase requirements (typically 60 days) and required mid-week travel with Saturday night stays and were generally in the $2200 to $2600 range roundtrip. They were still in place early last summer, but they are no longer offering them as they seem to be capitalizing on heavy return of leisure travel demand. Below are the seasonal requirements from archived fare rules from these discounted D1 fares from last year at this time on ExpertFlyer.

lindros2

that's way better than ATL <> MUC (or HAM).

Note that I got 70k SM + $60, so most likely the add'l $60 is fuel surcharge.

findark

All the time: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/premium-fare-deals-740/

Definitely way more often than I see big discounts for D1 awards.

It's comical to say you should price the exact same flight in dollars and miles. Getting the low miles price requires significant sacrifice in terms of destination, season, routing, day, etc. You want the cash fare which requires similar diligence and sacrifice.

March? [PREM FARE GONE] YYZ-EUROPE/AFRICA $1500USD SkyTeam AF/KLM (okay, maybe SkyTeam, but should count as close enough)

Even when I am flying on a Sunday to Sunday, departing from a DL fortress hub which basically never discounts anything, a small amount of flexibility and planning keeps me well under $4k.

xliioper

ATL-HAM involves partner metal and thus wouldn't qualify for the sale PS/D1 awards which must be 100% DL metal. Carrier surcharges are not charged on ex-US roundtrip awards (they would be broken out in fees if they were). 70K is roundtrip partner coach award rate (35K each way), sounds like maybe you are looking at that. The 74K roundtrip PS awards are also available from ATL. They can mixed with the sale D1 awards (37K PS award one-way and 74K D1 the other).

jetsfan92588

I'm trying to find 74k PS awards and I'm using the calendar, but whenever I click through to book, the lowest price from the flights shown is 119k. I'm looking at AUS-FRA. Am I doing something wrong?

Can't seem to get the image to work, but I'm looking at Nov 30 - Dec 12.

xliioper

Not sure why it is showing 119K roundtrip pricing on outbound flights. However, if you actually select one of the outbound flights and then look at return flights, it reprices itin down to 74K miles roundtrip.

fishingcarlos

How do I access the price calendar on the Delta site? I see flexible dates but not price calendar.

jw1313

Do a flexible date search, then look on the top of the results page and you'll see a link for a calendar on the upper left. The drop down to change the trip duration is on the upper right.

fishingcarlos

thank you!

JTE458

I got the same flight, except FLL-DTW-MUC for the same 148k mile price.

Now to decide if it's really a good idea to bring a 1 year old on this flight to hold/sleep in D1....

lindros2

I'm not speculating here - I paid 70k miles for PS, with $65.77 (sorry, not $60) in taxes/fees, in May (or rather, in April for May). Formatting is crap, sorry.

====================
MILES SkyMiles #*******999 Miles Redeemed 70,000 Miles
CHARGES Air Transportation Charges Base Fare $0.00 USD
Taxes, Fees and Charges United States - September 11th Security Fee(Passenger Civil Aviation Security Service Fee) (AY) $5.60 USD Netherlands - Security Service Charge (CJ) $14.40 USD Netherlands - Passenger Service Charge (RN) $20.00 USD Netherlands - Noise Isolation Charge (VV) $8.70 USD United States - Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Fee (APHIS User Fee - Passengers (XA) $3.96 USD United States - Immigration and Naturalization Fee(Immigration User Fee) (XY) $7.00 USD United States - Custom User Fee (YC) $6.11 USD
Total Charges $65.77 USD

TOTAL TICKET VALUE 70,000 Miles and $65.77 USD
====================

JBJ2435

I was able to find much better connection times today, so booked LAX-DTW-MUC for October. Looking at ZRH too...so many miles, so little (vacation) time!