180K is standard UC award from US to JNB via London.

My choices were SAA biz at 120k (they allocate only one biz seat for award travel), KLM biz at 120K via AMS, AF biz for 120k, or AF first for 160K via CDG. When SAA didn't work, thought it would be nice to try VS.

Marc

Actually with a short diversion adding perhaps 200 miles to the journey, DL 767-300ER's would in fact make it with ETOPS 138 which is not a stretch although I doubt that DL would do this routing (Then again if SAA can make money doing funky routings via Lagos, anything is possible).

I just want to be clear on this: So does SAA allocate ONE biz seat PER FLIGHT for Delta Skymiles redemption only, or for all general award redemption, including their own frequent fliers?

You could fly great circle GIG-JNB on ETOPS 207 and there are longer routings that scrape into ETOPS 180.

What are DL doing with the 767-400ERs these days?

DeltaNYC, I do not know. A number of us tried SAA for different dates; all of us using Skymiles. One did choose to spend the miles for one ticket and paid for another.

Marc

ETOPS - The flight is mainly over the Atlantic Ocean and it looks to be pretty far away from emergency landing sites. I can't speak authoritatively as I'm not an expert on ETOPS requirements and Delta equipment.

747 has 4 engines - no ETOPS problems. the 763s can make it, EXCEPT for the ETOPS issue.

I don't think any 763s are certified ETOPS 138.

764's are not configured for international, and I don't think they're ETOPS 207. Looking at SFO-HNL and LAX-HNL, it appears that they'd have to be ETOPS 180.

The reason I mentioned 764s is simply that DL can't really expand internationally unless equipment that is being used for domestic routes is redeployed on international routes. They have already talked about converting some 763s so the 764s came to mind. When the 764s were bought, DL expected to buy more than 8 777s!

ETOPS 207 is just a 15% extension of ETOPS 180 which is issued under certain conditions. I can only think of examples involving 777s though.

Are you talking about seating? Or ETOPS?

Seating wise, they don't have to be reconfigured. Delta can just say that this is B/E on the 764. Wouldn't be a stretch since they already use this plane on 4500 mile flights.

Business Class maybe, but not B/E. Those 764 seats are no where close to a genuine B/E seat.

While I don't disagree, you never know what Delta might decide to call it.

You know I am not very impressed with the Latin American 757 Business Class either. But, yes, you are correct, it would be a better term to call it Business Class and not B/E.

Seating! DL's 764s are configured for Domestic First Class, which is an entirely different service than International BE. Configuration of the plane isn't strictly dependent on distance of flights. It's dependent on the service the plane is intended for.

I'm pretty sure that every "increment" of ETOPS comes with significant additional requirements. My understanding is that the cost of the additional requirements isn't linear (as implied by our 15% statement) but more exponential (or geometric) in growth. My understanding is that required maintenance changes, records requirements change, flight crew training is affected, and on-board equipment (down to things like flashlights and bullhorns) is affected. I would imagine that the business case would have to be REALLY compelling before DL tried to meet all the requirements for GIG-JNB with their existing fleet. Especially given the coverage to JNB from Europe, and the addition of Air Kenya (or whatever) to SkyTeam.