jef7

Successfully booked online PDX-AMS-LIS//BCN-CDG-CAI-CDG-JFK-PDX

*Will hit Lisbon, Madrid, and Barcelona for a few days

*AF to Cairo

*AF back home to JFK on the A380!

*All for 120K and ~160US.

Not too shabby for DL miles.

SAT Lawyer

Booked IAH-AMS-CDG-SEZ-CDG-AMS-IAH for myself and my wife in business class for January 2011. A nice little vacation in the Seychelles. On the return, my wife is flying straight back to Houston, but I'm going to stopover in Amsterdam for a night, before joining her in Houston the following day. I'm sampling the PrivatAir flight on the return as well.

120,000 miles per ticket. That's a low level award to Africa. Taxes and fees were $196.80 for me and $179.00 for my wife.

Dealing with delta.com (as everyone knows) and DL's telephone agents was really an exercise in futility. Between a majority of DL's agents erroneously insisting that the AF-coded, HM-operated flights between CDG and SEZ were not available for SkyMiles redemptions or that they could only look at five possible dates before I had to hang up and call back, I thought that this award was never going to get booked.

Then, I signed up for KVS, and finding inventory was easy (or, at least as easy as it could be with SkyMiles as the currency). Forget the hopeless delta.com award calendar or the not-much-better human agents; KVS is a winner. ^

Jaimito Cartero

Hey, your wife may buy that excuse for the overnight in AMS, but we know better.

wco81

So KVS got you the booking codes or something and then you called DL and told them the award inventory info. from KVS?

Or does KVS let you redeem the awards directly?

SAT Lawyer

KVS allowed me to find the low-level inventory; then I plugged it in segment-by-segment doing a multi-city search on delta.com. I suppose I could have called it in, but why pay the $20 telephone booking fee (or whatever it is these days), if it's not absolutely necessary?

SAT Lawyer

Had nothing to do with PrivatAir. My wife wants to get back to the kiddos. Me, I want a longer vacation. I think I'm married to the only person on the planet who balks at a vacation in the Seychelles.

dereiziger

Booked the following BE flights out of MSP. 100,000 miles + $124,75 taxes

13-nov-2010
MSP - ORD* (Delta Air Lines)
ORD - AMS (KLM Royal Dutch Airlines)

22-nov-2010
AMS - ATH (KLM Royal Dutch Airlines)

30-nov-2010
ATH - AMS (KLM Royal Dutch Airlines)
AMS - MSP (Delta Air Lines)

I've been watching this for about 4 weeks and finally was able to do it (had to wait for time off request approval for holiday).... let's hope this time, though, I don't get stuck in Europe like I did back in April!!!!!! but then again,,,,

DECronk

* PS I routed myself through ORD on purpose. At least one of the 3 daily flights came up with the 100,000 miles price also, but I wanted to fly upper deck 747 BE.... ;-)

TCnSanDiegoCA

Booked BE SAN-CDG RT for 100k + 129.90 taxes.

4/2/2011
SAN-LAX (coach) (39 minute flight)
LAX-CDG (AF 777 Affaires)

4/12/2011
CDG-SLC (DL 767 BE)
SLC-SAN (F)

kahuna613

Booked JFK-NCE, GVA-CDG-FRA-JFK 7/4-7/12. Have to overnight in Frankfurt on the way back and I actually live in DC (prolly will take bus up on the 4th and buy a one way flight on the 13th to make it to class in the evening). Visiting friends in Cannes and will probably get a Swiss Pass and continue my exploration of Switzerland from Labor Day with last year's Delta deal. Taxes were $94, and I paid 60,000 miles. I was shocked to find any availability (much less at the low level), but a bunch of transatlantics opened up on Monday at the low level.

If I can find DC-NY-DC available at low, it will probably be cheaper/equal for me to pay the change fee instead of using other transportation (especially considering the relative hassle factor of buses/trains and getting to JFK).

I had 190K miles before redeeming this, now Im back out of RTW territory again. I don't consider this to be my preferred mode of redemption-I'd rather stop off in Europe on my way to Africa. That being said, ticket to Europe this summer are well over 1000 dollars, so miles are making my travel possible. I figure it won't be any easier to take time off now that I'm finishing grad school and entering the working world (although I already work full time...). Could be impetus to go for Gold though for next year...

humanoid94

I just booked two F tickets DTW-MSP-PDX(overnight)-HNL(AS)-PDX(AS)-DTW for my parents in January. 75K each. I used Alaska's award calendar to find the overwater availability and then built the trip on Delta.com. I found DL to have more availability on their own metal than I anticipated, but everything was West Coast to Hawaii- nothing on the 330s. AS had the dates my parents wanted, and they also wanted to try out a new product to the islands. I was trying to get them to Kauai, but neither DL nor AS had any availability at all to LIH, so I will just tag on revenue flights later.

GrizShel

As much as I've complained about Skymiles award availability here over the last couple of years, I'm guessing most of you won't need 17 pages of documentation before you believe me:

Just booked 4 award tickets together for DCA-IAH RT, peak summer travel dates (Thurs-Mon. schedule) for 100k, logged in as a Platinum.

A few years ago I would have been ho-hum about this -
but this time, given it is for 4 people on actual Delta flights for peak travel dates I'm very happy (and surprised.)

Mileage Lover

It took a LOT of persistence and unbelievable frustration with the booking engine but landed something pretty good.

3 Business Class tix for 100K each in April.

LAX-Brussels (via Paris AND Amsterdam) AF and KLM metal
AMS-LAX (via Paris) on AF

$142 in taxes each but glad to get this.

I do have a couple of pretty long layovers but that's OK with me.

Hint: Keep refreshing your search results -- different results came up nearly every time!

Good luck, everyone. They are out there.

jwhite4

Yeah, finding availability to any Hawaiian island other than HNL often next to impossible. And assuming I'm reading your schedule right, and that your parents have to overnight it in PDX before a morning flight to HNL, that's a PITA in that they'll need to pickup their luggage, take it to a hotel for the night, and then recheck it in the following morning.

Also, don't forgot to check with AS if they can check their bags thru to their interisland carrier. I know Hawaiian tends to interline with most airlines; I don't think Go! does though.

Jeff

EVA777

SLC - NRT - BKK - NRT - SLC 120K in J in July. The only bad part is a had to buy a ticket to get to SLC, can't win them all. Looks like most of July is in "blackout" mode for any low domestic flights in F.

Jaimito Cartero

Incredible as it must seem, the new tweaks to the award calendar are actually showing results.

On a whim early this morning, I decided to check on a FC award PHX-ANC for the Cabbage Do. Found a number of low 45k AS awards.

Then tonight, my SO got mad because she wanted to go, although she is going to be in SJO. So I spent about 90 minutes checking out all the different possibilities. Finally found a low coach SJO-PHX in late August, and a PHX-ANC on my same AS flight.

And then she goes back to SJO a couple of weeks later. The calendar still seemed a bit flakey, with awards showing one time, and then not showing 30 seconds later. I tried a bit of the refresh game. Still, considering the number of times I've looked for any low awards to/from SJO, it's nice to be successful at least once. And I've managed to almost clean out one more of the family DL accounts.

I had hoped for at least the return PHX-SJO in low biz, but they had two options, both double connects with 20 hours of waiting split between DTW and ATL. No thanks!