sarahmckasson

Just off the phone with the delta agent. I'm trying to book a flight to either Rome or Florance from Tucson, AZ leaving March 12, 2010 and returning March 27. The best that she could find was 125,000 miles per ticket. (I need two) She told me I should wait, that maybe they haven't "released" the lower milage seats. Anyone ever heard of that? I thought that the lower mileage seats were the first to go. She suggested I check back later. When I asked her how often, she said once a month. I was thinking more like twice a week! Also, she told me that checking online at delta.com was just as effective as calling the internation skymiles reservation number. So, my questions are:

Will I have just as much luck booking my trip if I just check online?

Should I check on a daily basis, or once amonth as she said?

Thanks for any suggestions you may have.

Sarah

rankourabu

did you tell her to check partners?
Air France, KLM, Continental, Alitalia...

use the nwa.com search engine to put together a route, then call in with what you want. You will never get the flights you need if you just tell the agent, I need to go XXX-YYY. Put together a route and spoonfeed.

Better yet, if you find a route online, transfer your miles and book on nwa.com

But I do agree, its a bit early for March 2010, but your problem seems to be getting out of Tuscon, there are plenty of overwater Y and C segments to Rome on your dates

mersk862

Welcome to FlyerTalk sarahmckasson.

For your first question, you can try booking online, but there have been some glitches with award searches online. I'd recommend calling in, simply because the agents can see more airlines than online - for example, going to Italy, Alitalia will be a prevalent option. You can't book Alitalia award tickets on delta.com, but you can by calling. Other options they can search for that can't be booked are flying to Europe on Singapore Airlines (fly PHX-JFK-FRA-FCO, JFK-FRA on SQ, FRA-FCO on AZ), as well as some other creative routings.

I'd recommend checking online daily to see if anything opens up, and call once a week depending on how much time you have.

Award seats do open up unexpectedly, so you never know. Best of luck!

Juanefny

When checking specific dates (which sounds like you're very specific) the award calendar works well. However, as some people have stated, it does not show availability on other partners. I personally usually just use the award and as the agent said, availability does change frequently, so I'd just keep checking online and once in a while I would call.

PS, I definitely would not call ever day.

MikeMpls

I would, or even 2-3 times a day, depending on how bad you want it. Availability is very fluid.

indufan

I encourage you to check from PHX also. There is fairly limited service out of TUS and if those award buckets are gone, then it won't matter about the oversees segment. Also consider departing from either PHX or TUS and returning to the other.

alex9654

I think indufan is right. I did a quick search on flightstats.com and looked at the cities you could possibly connect thru on SkyTeam. I found msp, iah, slc, atl, sea as options. The AS TUS-SEA flight gets in too late to make the connection to NW SEA-AMS anyway. I looked on nwa.com, continental.com, and delta.com, at these routes but nothing is available on the 3/12 for a standard coach award.

I would suggest looking out of PHX if you are concerned about booking soon, or change your dates, otherwise as mikempls said, inventory changes by the minute so just keep looking.

08flhrrider

Yes. Just went through it with AA. Seems like all the points flights were frozen untill mid April. I checked a couple times a week untill it opened up.
flhrrider

ExNonRev

+1

Excellent post

PMMMDL

I would suggest you pay $100 for an annual Expertflyer.com subscription.

This will show you all the available DL/NW/AF award seat availability.

angra

According to EF website, http://www.expertflyer.com/sessionlessClassList.do - they have award info for NW but not DL. I'm not really clear on the level of integration between the airlines yet - is this sufficient for our purposes of using DL Skymiles?

DeltaFirst

Sarah, something else you might try is checking how many miles the award ticket might cost you from ATL or JFK and then pay $ for your ticket from Az to either airport. Award travel during different days of the week from point a to point b aren't always the same if you're flexible a day or two on either side of your itinerary. Good luck.

ThroughATL2Much

Welcome to FT......

Two thoughts:

1) Make sure you are also asking the price (in miles) for Business/First. Sometimes you can get J/F availability in the lower levels with coach at the higher levels on the same flights and the price differential is not much (in miles). Maybe even coach one-way and F/J the other way. For this route, F/J is best on the outbound.

2) Buy a cheapo (using cash) to LAX, or maybe even ask about a routing (mileage) through LAX. Snag a non-stop LAX - Europe (I sleep better on those because they are longer) or maybe a nice LAX-JFK/CVG/MSP/DTW/ATL-Europe and then a quick connection to Italy.

In short, just systematically, ask the agent to check all of the hubs, but yes, you will have to "spoonfeed" the agent each hub. I try to be nice and ask them to check only 3 or 4 things and then I call back. I feel bad telling them how to do their job.

DLPhoenix

I went through something similar last year for a trip in March this year. I had no problems finding award tickets for ATL-TLV, but none were available for PHX-ATL.

I booked the ATL-TLV on award miles and waited for PHX-ATL-PHX to open. 21 days before the trip i purchased PHX-ATL-PHX tickets.

For some reason DL never released award tickets to/from PHX in March. They may be applying the same policy for Tucson. (BTW, I have no problems in the summer).

I would also recomend a search through NW.com (I used it for the first time two weeks ago and found it to be superior to Delta.com). You may need to open a WorldPerks account and transfer your miles to book your tickets, but I think there is a bonus for transfering miles between the programs.

DLP