infradig

sign up for a Flying Blue account on KLM.com or Airfrance.com and use their search tool. The calendar works! For biz you're looking for a saver award at 50,000 miles per leg. Once you find the flights, note them down, and then search by schedule on Delta.com and book there.

it's also worth reading through the sticky on finding award availability.

johndoe123

Does the same method apply for economy availability?

c_d

Yep, this works best, even without 3rd party tools. Just takes ages and is more than frustrating because of the various errors dl.com may throw at you. I was able to book a BE r/t for 150k, although I could have booked for 120k with a questionable routing using the method described.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...ss-awards.html

EDIT: BTW, the award cal showed me "HIGH" (red) for the outbound and "no flights" (gray) for the inbound. Pretty funny that I was able to book a low on a high day and a pure DL-metal return on a "no flights" day. That thing is just useless ... dont even try, waste of time.

Yes.

johndoe123

Ok, so using this method I searched BOI<>CDG and CDG<>LJU. I found valid flights for each, shown below. However when I go to stick them in one at a time, they won't show up. If I do leg 1: BOI<>SEA leg2: SEA-CDG leg3: CDG-LJU, it does not show the air france flight on leg 2 from sea-cdg -- it only shows delta metal flights with a connection (making it 4 hops).

If I do leg1: BOI<>CDG Leg2: CDG<>LJU it shows the BOI-CDG routing, but shows "no flights" for CDG<>LJU.

I should note, that Delta does also show this same iten as one package when I search BOI<>LJU directly but when you click book it errors out with the "sold out" error.

Note: I'm only testing with a one way right now, if I get a one way workign I'll mess with round trip.

rack him

I am attempting to book a Delta Skymiles award flight at the Lowest award level, which looks to be 25,000 miles for a domestic US roundtrip. Since my travel dates are flexible, I have been using the Skymiles Award Travel Calendar to choose dates when the Low award flights are available, but even when I select those dates, the resulting itinerary tends to still be above 25,000 miles (I have seen 32,500 miles, 40,000 miles, etc.). Is there something about this approach that is incorrect? Help would be appreciated - thanks.

davetravels

Oh boy!!! Here we go!!!

If you scan the forum, or search for "award calendar", you'll find TONS of posts that the calendar simply doesn't work. It's broken. They know it. It's a TOTAL embarrassment to Delta Air Lines, but they JUST DON'T CARE!!! They've been promising a fix, forever. We're not holding our breath!

I realize that this isn't much help. It's just the truth. They recently changed the colors and the look of the calendar, but NOT the functionality, so you can see where their priorities are!

Just another note, that, Delta feels that since they claim to dole out miles at a higher rate that their competitors, the cost of award tickets should be higher, which is why there are soooo few seats available at "LOW" level. I was AMAZED looking at UA last night, how EASY it is to find 12,500 mile one way awards for EXACTLY the non-stop flight I wanted, on EXACTLY the date I want, on the very first try! WOW! What a difference!!

mtkeller

One of the biggest bugs in the award calendar is that it's initially inaccurate in terms of colors. Click the forward arrow to move ahead by a month, then the back arrow to go back to the month you want. Voila, the colors are different (and generally more accurate). I can't remember for sure if this is a bug only with medallion availability or not, but it's worth a try to get a more accurate picture.

Another place to look is the sticky thread on low-tier business awards, as it works for domestic coach, too. The key is to search for segments one at a time and then piece them together using multi-city.

3Cforme

The Low Business Award sticky is useful. It's particularly useful if you want a complicated multi-partner international itinerary. Trying to keep things simple, how many traveling, in what class of service, from what airport, to what destination, on what dates?

mnredfox

Wait wait wait, after all the promises about it being fixed and then being told it was fixed it still isn't fixed? Big surprise? Me thinks DL is doing it on purpose...

davetravels

I don't remember anyone ever saying it was fixed. They mad a few cosmetic changes. That's about it.

Bicostal

I had the same experience. On CO/UA I was able to book RT IAD-ORD at low level for Easter weekend. To do the same on DL would have been 40K each in Y. Granted, IAD and ORD are UA strongholds, but still.

Buccaneeratheart

Your last sentence affirms your first three sentences.

ATL, JFK, SLC, MSP and DTW are DL strongholds. But like ALL Delta stations, getting a 25,000 mile roundtrip, whether 1 day or 350 days in advance occurs by Delta's design only 6% of the time. Some people (including all DL senior executives) find that perfectly okay, but where DL is losing its customer base increasingly is that 95% of customers do not find it okay. That is precisely why they lost this and 4 out of 5 other former DM's that I know and work with. The 5th one is now heading for the door as well and she is in ATL.

davetravels

In all fairness, I think it could be as high as 6.439728%!! Same as when a FT'er asks what their chance of an upgrade is, I like to try to be exact!!

Ravenboy2001

If you have a DL Gold or Platinum Amex, you're elibigle for "Pay with Miles". Up to $250 allows you to pay with 25k miles. And these same flights are frequently listed as 40k or more on the awards calendar search page.

So assuming you have the Pay with Miles option, I recommend searching that way before you even attempt to book an award ticket for 40k miles or more.

You'll be surprised how many RT flights you'll find for $250 or less if you search more than 30 days out. And if you have the Pay with Miles option, those tickets are always available for 25k miles.

Just a thought...

GYEWorldTraveler

It's so weird that I have never had an issue getting a domestic 25k award before. 1 day, 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, 300 days (350 days is not possible, DL only does advance booking up to 331 days).....I think it has to do more with elite status than anything. If you don't have any and you are what people here refer to as a "kettle", your low award is typically 32,500-40,000. Where I have issues is trying to book BE awards internationally.

As someone else posted above, it is amazing how much easier and user friendly some airlines (like COs) award calendar tool is. I really hope an enhancement comes so that we can book one-way awards for 1/2 the mileage on DL because if I am not mistaken this is possible on UA and AA. Some of the award ticket rules DL has are to be quite honest, customer unfriendly. No ability to do a routing like TUL-DTW-ORD(destination)-MSP-FAR for one 25k award. It would cost me 50k at low level to do this because it prices out as 2 seperate one-way awards. I still think someday that DL will fix this and fix the award calendar but it obviously isn't a top priority.