muffy77

I did a keyword search for this, read several threads, and was surprised not to find any hits like my recent experience. I am trying to fly from Jax to Portland, Sacramento, etc. next April and am very flexible on dates, WAY in advance, can fly into a few airports. Yet I still can't find award ticket for less than 40,000 miles. Then I tried from JAX to multiple islands in the caribbean and couldn't find tickets for less than 50k. These tickets wouldn't be great deals even at 25k and 35k miles respectively I know, but at this point I just want to use up the few delta miles I have left and earn miles with another carrier. I'm assuming I'm not alone here...

fti

Look on nwa.com, then once you find something link your DL and NW accounts and transfer your miles to NW then book on nwa.com. I have done that consistently recently and award availability has been much better. But I have heard that in the past week, the NW website has been more "Deltafied" (booking only up to 330 days, not 352 days in advance, more error messages, etc) so it might not be as beneficial anymore.

thepointsguy

Try NWA.com.. if you find something you like, create a WP account, link it to your delta and transfer the miles.

DLdweeb

Or you could spring for the phone fee and call. The DL award calendar is arguably the most useless and misleading piece of programming in recent memory.

Live4Miles

I know it doesn't help you, but I just checked and you can fly from oma-anc for 25k (7/4 to 7/8).

I think the ANC flights are about the best use of miles you can find.

StayingHomeIsBetter

You made me curious, so I looked at JAX to PDX in the fall.

There are some 25,000 mile tickets available, if you want to leave JAX at 6:00 AM and return from PDX on a red-eye.

Generally, it appears that DL is perpetuating the farce that low mileage tickets are available by offering only the most inconvenient times of the day.

I also looked after the first of the year. Availability is a bit better, but that's when I started finding days where the award calendar said low mileage flights were available, but the daily schedule page would not display them.

I also found a number of flights, without a single seat sold on them yet, where the lowest award was for 40,000 miles.

Sorry, I am not being helpful... just confirming what you probably already found.

You have probably identified the long-term solution to your problem... finding another airline.

Another example of DL tightening the screws on the FF.

redtailshark

This is the DL MO. The SM are worthless, so why assign them any value in your head?

DL management's deliberate obfuscation of redemption opportunities by, for example, failing to make the award calendar functional indicates their deep-seated philosophy.

Instead they trumpet the infinite number of SM that you can accumulate through partner purchases etc. I don't doubt you could easily build up 0.5M SM in a year, with only moderate effort.

But why? They don't buy much, and attempts at redemption will just cause you giant frustration as you get bounced around the endless, valueless feedback loop consisting of DL.COM, DL web support, DL online chat and then the SM center - who finally tell you to go back to DL.COM TO ATTEMPT THE ACTIONS WHICH YOU COULD NOT PERFORM AND ABOUT WHICH YOU WERE COMPLAINING IN THE FIRST INSTANCE!!

No, I'm not making this up - that's exactly how my last attempt at ticket cancellation worked.

There's no excuse for CS this poor. Everyone else does it better, even KL tell you to your face "This is not possible" and don't waste your time unnecessarily.

DL at the moment have the worst CS interface and the worst loyalty program of any major corporation I've experienced.

garygleck

while not mathematically the best use of miles, may be the most practical given the outrageous mileage costs for FF...Why use 40,000 miles for a $300 flight if 30,000 miles buys the flight?

3Cforme

Here's a thread with over a hundred posts ytd: award successes.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...t-here-70.html

It's hard to predict award availability on a specific route and accrue miles in one carrier program accordingly, but the OP might check his alternate carriers and see if they're offering awards at 25K on that route when he wishes to travel.

fti

Actually FAI is even better and you can fly to BOTH ANC and FAI for the same 25K miles (or one of those two cities plus another city in Alaska such as BRW, AKN, OME). Delta allows one free stop on their domestic award tickets (at least they did the last time I checked, which wasn't since late last year).

Wonder why I am using my miles to go to ANC and/or FAI four times this year?

redtailshark

@:-) Because, FAI and ANC - and all other AK destinations are fabulous.

Surely it can't be because you want to burn all your valuable BEST-IN-CLASS SkySnork miles and get out while the going's not so awful?

fti

Honestly, a combination of both. Unfortunately I have a lot of Slymiles to burn (many from AmEX MR). I am hoping to burn many of those on C tickets to Europe as soon as I can book the flights this coming weekend (for next spring).

As long as I can find the lowest level award seats to AK, I won't complain too much. Fortunately I usually have flexibility in my AK trips so availability is usually not a problem. And for now, I am stuck with DL/NW unless I want to drive to MSP. Worse than a hub captive

willdallas2003

I have booked three 25k awards this year and every one was on the dates that I was looking for. I'm sure there are alot of people who are doing a lot worse than they may have done in the past, but 25k miles and 5 bucks is getting me all the flights I want.

StayingHomeIsBetter

I'm curious, and I ask this sincerely, were these at "reasonable" times of the day? Straightforward routings? My experience has been that I have been offered a lot of 6:15AM departures and routings that I would not select if I were paying for the ticket.

Sometimes seems like the 25,000 mile itineraries are the airline equivalent of the dented can of green beans at the supermarket.

waltinsocal

No problem here either; 7/11-7/14 SNA-ATL 25K plus $5. But back to the OP. There is no way anyone on this board knows if the overall availability of 25K awards is down. If there is no 25K award availability for the dates you which to travel, in your opinion, the availability will be "down." For others who are getting 25K awards, the availability will not be "down". For those who feel there are nefarious motives for everything Delta does, it will be, "But of course availability is down." And on and on and on. It's no different than asking what the upgrade odds are for a particular route, which leads to numerous questions about time of week, time of day, etc. Speculation is about the best we can do, except those here who feel that every award every day should be 25k. Even then, those folks would complain. (Not directed at the OP.)