jklevine

HAve any of you noticed that since the beginning of simplifares Delta wil not sell seats on certain routes. An example is DCA--SRQ. I fly this route frequently and the only way I have been able to make tickets is to enter each flight seperately. e.g. DCA-ATL-SRQ! I have called SMS and thier response is that revenue management has been doing strange things and they dont know why flights are showing no availability to sell when quiried as an origin and destination even though both planes clearly have seats. To emphasise this point try purchasing a ticket, even in F, from DCA to SRQ tomorrow evening. No flights but then check both the DCA-ATL flights and the DCA-SRQ flights. Does this seem strange to anyone that DL is not selling seats on thier planes? Are they trying to hold out seats for people flying from different markets? Please xplain becasue I cant for the life of me figure it out. I had this problem flying to Sarasota last week and the week before. My parents also have the same problem and as a result bought a one way CO there and are flying DL back. Seems like a stupid strategy to me.

ecaarch

Seems like a bug in the software at delta.com to me. Delta IT folks, are you listening here?

Traveller

I'm used to this. I have to use a Travel Agency website to book work travel. I often have to put 4 legs into the booking engine, if I don't I get high fares.

For example, if I put in MLB-BHM and BHM-MLB, it might come back with Y or B fares but if I break up the trip into 4 segments, it'll come back with Q fares.

I even do this on the DL website because I often don't like what flights they give me, for example, a 5 hour layover in ATL when I know there is an earlier flight.

RunawayNFly

I have had similar problems on Delta.com since the inception of Simplifares. I go from PBI-PHL weekly. It can be quite challenging at times. When the problem occurs for a particular pair of flights, I go to the travel tab at the top of Delta's home page, and do it point to point.

bursa

Does looking at flights on orbitz.com and then searching for the ones you want at delta.com work?

seawolf

There's a good chance it's related to this.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=428900

ncsubill

I have seen a similar thing with the Awards tickets. I was looking for 2 FC awards from GSO - SAN departing 8/11 returning 8/16. It only shows SkyChoice tickets for 853/1793 outbound and 212/1023 on the return.

But if I do 2 searches one for GSO-ATL round trip and then ATL-SAN round trip it shows SkySaver available for all 4 flights. But this would require 2 itineraries. Would it be possible to call Delta and have them book it all together as one Skysaver award?

JS

Yes! I ran into exactly the same type of problem myself. Origin to destination, nothing; origin to ATL and ATL to destination was available.

You have to call them and pay the $5 telephone fee, but they can do that and combine the flights into one award ticket.

jklevine

point to point is the only way to make reservations between a couple of city pairs on delta in general. This is not a problem only with delta.com but with thier reservations system in general. I have had sms agents tell me flights are sold out and then I have tried to explain to them that if you make a point to point reservation it works. The bad ones have said it is an illegal flight blah blah blah the good agents ahve told me its a problem and it needs to be fixed. Now maybe im just a naive travelr here but shouldnt someone at this airline be concerned that their reservations system will not book tickets on flights that cleary have availability? Instead these seats go out empty and unsavy travelers would chose a different airline. First of all flights to SRQ are not cheap but even if they were it seems better to me to sell the seats then not. This is neither an isolated nor recent problem as I have encountered this problem on three separate occasions.

Robert Leach

Clearly there are times where, thanks to married segments and other inventory controls, the res system will show no availability between a given city pair when, in fact, there is availability on each individual flight leg of a given connection. However, in general, you're only going to see this when the flights are relatively full or the particular market you're looking at is a very low cost market where the number of discount seats will be very limited.

And you'll almost never see this with full fare seats (i.e., if F or Y is available on both legs of a connection, it will almost always be available on the married segments needed to make that connection).

Therefore, what the OP is describing really sounds screwy and clearly represents a bug somewhere in the software running Delta's inventory management (and if I'm not mistaken, a new software piece was implemented within the last few months).