BKKLEE

Tried to use Delta SkyMiles on China Eastern for either

a round trip:-
Bangkok-Shanghai-Harbin
Harbin-Shanghai
Shanghai-Bangkok

or open jaw:-
Bangkok-Shanghai-Harbin
Shanghai-Bangkok

but both times attempts failed.
The local Delta agent thinks that China Eastern awards do not allow either
stop-overs or open jaw tickets.............

I asked Delta/SkyMiles a week ago, but no response to date.

Anyone have any experience with China Eastern awards?

mnredfox

What do you mean by fail? Mispricing? DL agents are pretty clueless on booking MU flights. I've had issues with them when it isn't a valid "MU routing". Will price out twice as much.

Keys to MU:

1. Use EF to find MU availability. Sometimes EF doesn't work 100% with MU, but if you can find it you're golden as EF is way faster than the DL agents can do it themselves.

2. Call DL with specific flights. If they can't pull the flights have them narrow the time search.

3. Instruct the DL agents to do manual/long sells. This is required on MU. Don't believe when they say they did their search and it came back empty, they have to do manual sells to book anyway.

4. If it misprices, insist someone at the international desk or pricing desk helps you. Don't take the typical DL agent BS of "it is what it is"

5. Hope you get Chisholm.

DHalltheway

Are you trying to book in Business Class or in Econ?
And how many times did you try this?

At times DL agents don't know their way around their system that well. It would be best at times to politely hang up and call again. You don't want to argue with an agent or they may flag you and you won't get help in the future. Asian call centers tend to have better agents imo.

The open jaw ticket should work IMHO, if you price a stop over like that they may charge you a china domestic stop which increases the amount you need for redemption.

If it is in Business class, there is a glitch in the system right now and they can't access the Bussiness class for their partner airlines so it seems. Of course DL seems to not know that this is the case and are saying otherwise.

The last reason could be just lack of availability. Of course if China Eastern doesn't work try China Southern to Harbin and from Shanghai you could try Vietnam airlines or even Malaysian airlines to BKK via their regional hubs.

mtkeller

As far as I know, that's just an AF/KL glitch. Other partners should be fine.

The stopover should be OK, as the fare component won't be domestic China and subjected to the distance-based pricing.

DeltaFan4Now

Is this the problem? I was wondering. I have a CI leg in J on an itinerary I was trying to change yesterday. Upon repricing the award, they said the CI segment broke the fare. Never had that happen before and the Neither the agent nor the Intl Reticketing Desk could explain it...

DHalltheway

Well that doesn't seem to be the case for my experience as I also tried to get J on other airlines recently without success either.

The odd thing about the stop over component is I can't price a stop over on trips to the US. [E.g. XXX - HUB - DCA (destination) - BOS (stopover) - HUB XXX]

I've tried it numerous times and with numerous agents and nobody can ever price it, but yet it seems everyone says it can be done. Or if it can they want to charge me more miles for the DCA-BOS segment. So pardon my skepticism.

mtkeller

Routing? If they could see and book it, then it's a different issue to what DHalltheway is suggesting is being problematic. If it's just a date change, it's really bizarre, but if you didn't have a CI leg and added one, you might have done something that violated the routing rules, thereby causing a fare break.

J inventory that you knew was available or just asking about J inventory? How recently? You're the first and only person to report issues (other than the usual complaints about poorly-trained or lazy agents) extending beyond AF/KL since the end of last week, as far as I've seen.

What's XXX? There's a high likelihood that the proposed routing becomes invalid if the hub you transit after BOS is any North American hub other than JFK, and therefore they want to collect more miles. DL's routing rules on awards can be rather inflexible, especially if you're not looking at them to see see where the ticketed point deductions are. It can sometimes make sense to transit a hub that's out of the way because the TPD actually provides a legal routing where one otherwise wouldn't exist. What I can say is that a stopover in the US coming in from overseas is totally possible, as this screenshot (obviously made before the issues with AF/KL awards arose) attests.

DeltaFan4Now

Sorry for the poorly worded statement... The CI leg was pre-existing, I was trying to change a DL leg on the return to the US. AUS-DTW-PEK//HKG-TPE-NRT<SO>HND-DTW-AUS with the CI metal HKG-TPE-NRT being the problem. I was trying to change the HND-DTW to NGO-DTW and the agents said that the CI leg was breaking the fare. Doesn't make sense because it could only be available in LOW (partner availability), but they said it was going to be 50K more miles

DHalltheway

Recent as same time when I try to book the AF/KL flights.

To be honest, I can't vouch availability for the others as they don't show availability on EF, but I can tell you that I tried Jet airways, Malaysian airlines from Asia to Europe and had very large date flexibility (2 weeks) for flights Q4 this year, away from peak holiday periods in Europe and Asia.

I've managed to book 7 other Business class tickets this year on those airlines with little to no issues because of my flexibility.

XXX would be either HKG, KUL, SIN or BKK.

Most often, the hubs that agents would put me on would either be DTW or MSP as a default due to mile pricing at the time and proximity as DL and most of their partners don't fly to DCA or BOS direct.

I have also managed to book KUL - ICN - DTW - LGA [open jaw, because I can't do JFK/LGA - BOS as a stopover] BOS - JFK - ICN - KUL.

However, I have seen more flexibility when booking for Asia to Europe. Here are two of the more complex route I have managed to book in the past couple of years:

SIN - CDG - ZRH (stopover) - AMS (transit) - BER (destination) - CDG - HCM - SIN
KUL - CDG - FRA (stopover) - CDG (transit) - LHR (destination) - AMS - CPT

mtkeller

I don't think the issue was with CI. I think the issue is that you exceeded four segments on the return with the embedded surface sector TYO-NGO, since the routing does fit the MPM for HKG-AUS. I'm not sure how that works out to 50K extra instead of 45K extra, however, as any sensible way of breaking the fare would incur an extra 45K miles.

MH award inventory can fairly reliably be checked using the Enrich website. There have been rumors that they've reduced award inventory a lot lately. Given the collapse of IT's international network and the fact that IT and 9W partner with a lot of the same carriers, I am not at all surprised that you couldn't find anything on 9W, as they probably were taking up a lot of people who were stranded by IT. I'm not ready to accept that this is a larger problem with business award redemptions, as it sounds like it might have been an agent issue or legitimate inventory variations.

Ah, I was thinking TATL not TPAC. Were you using the soon to be no more DCA-BOS non-stop, or making a connection? DCA-LGA-BOS-DTW-NRT-SIN/HKG/BKK is going to be valid for revenue but not for a single award fare component, since it includes five segments. Here's proof that DCA-LGA(stop)-DTW-NRT-BKK prices out just fine at 120K in J. (I didn't tack on a low BKK-US, but it shouldn't be an issue.)

Tomphot

On MU - In Jan I flew JFK-PVG-BKK 2 weeks later BKK-PVG with a stop over then on to JFK.

DHalltheway

You could be right on that, but I called back multiple times and got multiple locations so I eliminated agent issue.

Inventory issues, I have no way to verify except against my prior experience and what I can find on EF. I used the enrich website with a pinch of salt too as they don't always tally, similar to KE availability on EF.

Nope, I didn't ask for DCA-BOS non-stop, I tried going through various hubs but even then they always priced it out and asked for more miles.

I've managed to do more segments on some of my other award bookings from Asia to Europe. Thus, I am thoroughly perplexed by my inability to do the same TPAC.

I even managed to book on KE once
KUL - ICN - IAD (open jaw because stop over is not permitted) BOS - JFK - ICN - HKG

This trip above, I also unable to price in the IAD/DCA/BWI - BOS (non-stop or via hubs) into it either.

mtkeller

One would hope the agents are using the (no longer very) new MH booking code for awards, and I can't imagine that every agent didn't know. This sounds basically like typical DL award issues and not a total problem with all partner J redemptions right now, since DL is now willingly acknowledging that something changed within the AF/KL systems and it's taking some time to resolve.

I know the North America to/from not North America award ticket fare rules specifically say three transfers (four flights) each direction. Maybe they're more lax on that for things like Asia-Europe, but I'm not in the mood to fight with DL.dumb right now in hopes of actually getting it to produce fare rules when you'd need AF/KL inventory to even get a booking going. The examples you posted above, of course, comply with the four segment each direction rule, so don't show that you can do more. Also, the MPM-based routing rules might surprise you with where they actually decided to break the fare. Wouldn't it be nice if DL published their rules for award tickets rather than making us guess them through experimentation?

DHalltheway

Yep I don't blame you. But my experience makes it hard for me to believe that I can do a stopover within the US. This is not isolated either, as I have tried to build multiple TPAC without pricing one with successful stopover within the US. This could be due to origination issue.

However, what irks me out even more is DL and ST repeated making it impossible for me to purchase a NA airpass when I purchase TPAC or redeem an award ticket!

mtkeller

Gotta be a routing/segments issue. Here's proof: BKK-NRT-SFO-LAX(stop)-DTW-HND(airport change)NRT-BKK for 120K in F/J all the way. I'd bet that if I tried to book BKK-NRT-SFO-LAX(stop)-XXX-YYY as the outbound and YYY-HUB-TYO-BKK return, it would want more miles, since the outbound fare component has too many segments.