xliioper

Not exactly surprising as the first couple weekends before Christmas are going to generally be challenging to find award inventory to many destinations due to demand.

Duke787

Yeah fair enough -- this was added as a family thing and the date was given to me so I don't have any flexibility if I go, so just trying to figure out how to make it work without wiping out all of my miles accounts.

flyerCO

Keep looking. Inventory does regularly change with DL.

Also try CUN. With married segments, CUN-SYD may return differently than MEX-SYD.

flyerCO

If I had work or LA was a city I really want to visit, great. However this will be vacation. I'll fly SAT-MEX the night before stay at the capsule hotel at MEX T1 and fly out in morning. This way no need to pay for hotel in LAX. DL will be my day use hotel.

italdesign

Thanks for the reminder that ex-Mexico is still the (newest) old rate. Interestingly, if I start in TIJ instead of MEX, to Asia the price is 110k instead of 90k.

xliioper

There are partner business class awards to Asia (such as TYO or ICN) from TIJ for 90K miles (CSM900 awards). They are just much more challenging to find dates with availability than out of MEX. Switching to "Price Calendar" award search on delta.com is useful here as it will show a calendar month at a time which you can forward and reverse by the month (the standard Flexible Dates view only shows a week at time).

italdesign

Does that mean AM has very little TIJ-MEX award space, or something else? If I found MEX-LAX-TPE for 90k, ideally I can tag on TIJ-MEX for free (if that space exists), but I'm always seeing an additional +20k, or the "saver" space is replaced by the typical 400k option.

I've definitely used that before, but now I can't find that option. It doesn't even show a 7 day matrix now - it only shows the one day being searched, still in the matrix format, but with all other days as "not available" (but they are available). Doesn't matter if I'm logged in. Anyone else seeing this?

<3vacations

Anyone here using any paid for services for award mile deals alerts that show DL awards and not transfer CC points to random airline awards? After my 97K RT business DL award tickets were scrapped 2 years ago I haven't seen anything and of course the miles needed just keep increasing for DL. I also had awards booked on TK and then they rescheduled 3 times then the miles expired so I'm not having much luck. I'm FL based so awards out of PR or even CUN or MEX aren't the worst idea but we have added a new member to the family so that complicates things a bit more.

xliioper

NAS is going to be closer to Florida than CUN or MEX and has same partner award levels (75K each way business class to EU). Most of Caribbean will work except for PR and USVI as they are actually treated like other domestic US cities as far as award levels. I doubt you will ever see anything like 97K roundtrip to EU again and 150K roundtrip is probably about the best you will find. DL is currently running a spring D1 sale from US to a number of EU destinations that has been going on for a number of weeks now from 153K roundtrip with Amex 15% discount. It has been posted in several threads here in DL forum. The window for travel is quickly closing however as the awards are only valid for travel from March through May 8th.

If you have leftover DL miles and don't see yourself earning any more and have limited flexibility, you might want to consider setting your sights lower for the miles than long haul international (US/Canada/Mexico/Central America/Caribbean/etc.).

<3vacations

Thanks I will check those and flights out of NAS

Duke787

Was just able to find SYD - MEX and snagged it at least to hold it. Detouring via MEX isn't ideal but there may be alternatives given the nature of transiting LAX after a TPAC flight -- especially if I only have a carry-on to guarantee there won't be any issue with a bag being passing customs outside of my view.

I know 99.999% of the time this wouldn't happen but there few threads that popped up about this happening when folks ended up in YYZ and had bags at DTW that passed customs outside their view has me the tiniest bit in my head for an international to international connection.

flyerCO

DTW has ITI. This requires both flights be operated by same carrier, and bag tagged for it.

Duke787

Gotcha which is not the case here. Either way -- one leg booked, will see if the other direction opens back up and then have to decide if it's worth going but that's a different story, at least the possibility still exists.

peagreenid

I am fascinated by these great ideas about saving your miles by flying through Mexico or the Caribbean. A few weeks ago, I found the info about traveling through NAS to go to Europe which will come in handy while booking flights for a transatlantic cruise next year. My husband is not as impressed by this as it will add AT LEAST one day of travel to our trip. We are also taking a cruise next year that starts in Sydney and ends in Tokyo. We like flying business class for TATL flights. We have never flown TPAC and the cost going west is crazy high. It doesn’t help that we are flying both directions for this cruise to/from two different countries. I have enough miles that I could use them for one of us but would still have to pay for one which is roughly $7000.

Looking at flights from MEX to SYD there were a lot of options for amazing award ticket prices. I also found a lot of options to/from SJD. I finally talked my husband into this because you just can’t argue with the cost/mile savings, although he is still fighting me because he doesn’t understand why we want to fly to Mexico City to go to Sydney. He would prefer to use Mexico City as he likes the idea of the hotels in the airport since we plan on flying out the very next day and there just aren’t many good airport hotel options in Cabo.

There are parts of this that I’m not understanding. What is the purpose of flying AM vs DL except for lower award pricing? I know there are options in lie flat seats on AM but when I checked the MQM’s earned on mock bookings the DL flights earned more than AM and I’m hoping to maintain my PM status and every last MQM helps.

There are a LOT of options flying HND to SJD (I couldn’t find any bargains for MEX) but I can’t understand why every flight from HND to SJD is 32+ hours with total layovers of 15 to 24 hrs. With the mileage cost savings for Delta One from MEX to SYD (and the possible savings from HND to SJD) I have enough miles to book both of our flights both directions but I will never get my husband agreeing to a 20 hour layover before flying to SJD and then still having to fly home from SJD. Anyone have any other ideas on this that don’t have the lengthy layovers?

Davescj

I scored MEM - MSP - CDG - SLC - MEM for 255K. I also found CDG - Cairo for 40K in J and (oddly) Bucbarest - CDG for 25K in "business."

The one flight I'm worried about is CDG - SLC....it seems always to be late and I have a 75 min connection. That could be....interesting.