Dovster

Agreed.

Flying TLV-MXP-ATL-FLL on M Fare, upgrading with miles, I sat in Coach on the AZ TLV-MXP segment.

Conversely, flying MIA-CDG-MXP-TLV, on a combination of AF and AZ flights, on an award ticket, I was in Biz all the way.

rcs85551

You cannot upgrade on intra-european flights, be it with a PMU or with miles. Only a completely free ticket yields a confirmed seat up front. Whether DL codeshares on a flight or not does not matter at all for intra-european flights.

neatbrian

I actually do this all the time (upgrade Y tickets to BE on flights to Europe using only my miles).

The entire itinerary is upgraded, including the domestic segments -- and you even get to use the CRC in the domestic segments by showing them your BE ticket -- and you can use the BE lines in the foreign airports.

However, if any of the segments include code-share partners on non-delta metal, those will be in coach. But all segments on Delta metal will be up front.

Enjoy your trip.

smilee

Hello, I am a NW Gold, AS MVPG, and have an orphaned 50k skymiles. I was thinking I would like to purchase a Delta ticket to somewhere, to help me maintain my NW Gold elite status, BUT

it looks like upgrades come from Y-B fares. Aren't those fares often more expensive then discount business fares anyhow. So wouldn't it be cheaper to purchase a discount business fare instead of upgrading? I was looking at flying either to South America, Europe, the Carribean, or Hawaii? Any ideas?

When and where do others use miles to upgrade?

jpdx

Getting an upgrade is a good use for orphaned miles, imo. On DL, you need to buy an M, B, or Y fare to be able to upgrade. It'll be tough to find an M fare to Europe for less than $1,200, which is not much less than what a discounted Business seat on NW or CO may cost you if you catch a good sale.

biggestbopper

I see that Singapore offers a one class upgrade from the US to S.E. Aisa for 50,000 Skymiles. Has anyone actually gotten such an upgrade using Skymiles or are they (as I suspect) rather hard to come by? I assume this is a roundtrip upgrade if you actually get one, but the Delta award chart is unclear.

If you have managed to get this upgrade, please detail how you did it and what the cost of the fare upgraded was.

I am hoping to go to BKK and Jakarta from the West Coast sometime in March for three weeks or so and have enough Delta miles to go free First Class or do the upgrade thing (I guess from Coach to Business).

MegatopLover

I can't answer your principal question, but I can comment on one of the possibilities you raised.

If I understand your question, the problem you will have is that you're doing this only one month out from departure. Claiming an SQ Business Class award with DL SkyMiles more or less requires three months' advance planning, sometimes a lot more. Five or six months is preferred, and even then you may have trouble getting the dates you want. First Class can be hit or miss-- you might get an award on shorter notice because there's more demand for Raffles awards, but SQ pretty much limits F awards to one per flight, barring extraordinary circumstances (such as weak demand on the outer leg of SQ 25/26 JFK-FRA-SIN), and only three flights ex-USA have F to begin with. SQ limits Raffles awards to two or three per flight, though all seven flights ex-USA have Raffles Class (all SpaceBed-equipped). SQ sometimes releases more award inventory very close to departure if the loads look low, but that inventory is not always made available to DL members (different partners have access to different award inventories, with SQ KrisFlyers naturally having the best access). On top of that, something funny has been going on for the last year or so. SQ has released a nice bit of long-haul award inventory to DL members (far more than the drought of 2004), but for some reason it has become difficult to get award seats on intra-Asia legs. I called 330 days out and could get no award seats on the SIN-BKK legs. So even if you get it, you might be stuck purchasing tix for the intra-Asia legs.

Upgrade inventory may be much better than pure award inventory, so do inquire about that. If no one here responds, the DL Partners Award desk ought to be able to tell you what fare class you need to buy, perhaps the "Fully Flexi" class on SQ's website. I would locate the upgrade award inventory with DL first, put a one-day hold on it, then purchase the tix for that specific flight with SQ. If you're quick, you can do the searches at www.singaporeair.com while you're on with the Partners Awards Desk.

In any event, good luck. I love Raffles and First travel on SQ. Heck, I love any travel on SQ.

HeathrowGuy

Upgrade inventory should not be too hard to find - the issue is that only FULL FARE Economy tickets can be upgraded, and those often cost more than the Business Class tickets that can be had via consolidators.

DeltaFlyingProf

Have you had personal experience of the easy upgrade inventory you are talking about?

HeathrowGuy

Yes, actually - I have found it far easier to redeem DL miles for SQ upgrades than to use said miles even for DL upgrades. The SQ flights that tend to pose the most difficulty are JFK-FRA-SIN, LAX-NRT-SIN, and SFO-HKG-SIN - the other SQ ex-NA flights generally have availability IME (that said, I generally redeem for travel in March/April, so no idea if this would be different for other times off the year).

But again, the kicker is the fact that a full-Y ticket (with absolutely no discounts or restrictions) must be purchased - the OP could likely get 1 if not 2 Business Class tickets from a good consolidator for as much or less than 1 full-Y transpac.

DeltaFlyingProf

I presume that if it is easy with DL miles it must be at least as easy with *A miles and on *A it does not have to be Y fares. I have made a small comparison in another thread on the prices and number of miles required. It's a lot more favorable to use *A miles on SQ.
Have you had success on the LAX-NRT-SIN or the SFO-HKG-SIN or the JFK-FRA?

PS: What does ex-NA mean?

rebadc

I can confirm Megatoplovers post.

I was able to score Raffles class from US - SIN but had to purchase SIN - BKK coach seats.

I checked with the Silver Kriss lounge attandant and was informed that each of the 3 flights from SIN - BKK were 25% full in Business.

She told me to take it up with Delta, that award seats should have been available.

HeathrowGuy

1. Make no presumptions with respect to SQ. Until a couple of years back, it was often EASIER to get SQ FF seats using DL miles than UA miles since DL had fixed inventory and UA had flexible (i.e., mostly zero) allotments.

2. It is now more favorable to use *A miles on SQ, without question. The DL/SQ full Y-fare restriction alone is off-putting.

3. I have not had any success on those routes for getting either upgrades or award seats using DL miles, and only scored success once on SFO-HKG-SIN using UA miles. The routes I mentioned are the strongest North American routes for SQ (as evidenced by the fact that they all receive daily 747s -- with A380s coming to SFO and LAX shortly -- while all other SQ services from North America operate with 777s and 345s.

4. Ex-NA means "ex-North America".

MegatopLover

I'm gonna follow up my own thread with specifics, since in between the post earlier this morning and right now I booked another award: First Class on SQ 001/002 SFO-(HKG)-SIN vv. on the exact dates I wanted (before Christmas and right after New Year's), on the flight I wanted. Of course, I booked it 330 days out from the return. Even then, I found ZERO availability for the intra-Asia legs up to BKK and back in any class of service. Still, it's the best use of 140,000 SkyMiles I can think of. Looking forward to being up front on a Megatop again.

But I'm still useless to the OP's question on upgrades.

Xeno

I may be on one of these routes -- i.e. SG from USA to SIN via HKG or NRT -- but am worried about the cost of full coach. Where are these consolidators that will sell me a business ticket on this route for a comparable price?