bharatva

I've booked flights to the Soccer World Cup in South Africa next year using my American and United points, American requires 75 000 points and United 85 000 respectively, Delta initially asked for 85 000 points but have now raised it to an astronomical 190 000 that is 105 000 points more than other carriers, that's really unfair !!!

pbd456

this is one of the many enhancements from the world biggest airline.
Thank you for doing business with delta.

soitgoes

Delta didn't "raise the price". There simply may not be SkySaver inventory when you want to travel--small wonder, given the demand that exists for seats during a major event such as the World Cup.

TTT

You may be looking too far in advance. Delta, in general, is more liberal with award tickets closer to departure. If you want to get something confirmed I would suggest either paying what they ask now or going with another airline. Have you called Delta to see what you can get on their partners KLM or Air France? You can use miles on both airlines and both fly to JNB.

Delta may feel that they can command a premium, however, because they are offering a non-stop vs a layover in Europe.

FYI, purchasing a ticket for a two week period in June from Atlanta is $2,400 in an H fare so using miles may be a better deal. Any other airline is charging between $2,200 and $7,900 for the same dates. Again, though, you may be looking too far in advance.

fti

Welcome to FT.

The OP's point is not that they are still trying to find seats - they already used AA and UA miles and used substantially fewer miles. But that is already a known fact to many of us - DL gives away miles almost like candy. But they require tens of thousands more miles for many awards than other airlines.

discstickers

NYC-JNB 06/07/10-07/12/10 is $3700 in coach. LGA-ATL-JNB vv. every segment is pricing into M except ATL-LGA.

(EK is the cheapest at just over $2000)

SAT Lawyer

DL is truly awful when it comes to finding long-haul award inventory priced out at the minimum "low" level. With that said, it's hardly surprising that inventory allocation may be stingy when it comes to travel to South Africa for the World Cup. Basic supply and demand. I'm sure you'll see the same phenomenon when it comes to trying to find lodging.

AndyTLe

Just one point of data. I recently was looking for Y & J tickets from US-China for next month and was able to find multiple days and routings at the "low" level.

GUWonder

Yes, but the OP did manage to book award seats to the World Cup using UA and AA miles at seemingly reasonable levels in the OP's opinion. Apparently DL's idea of supply and demand is basically different than other airlines.

SAT Lawyer

I consider that to be very fortunate. Don't you?

Heck, I couldn't even get tickets to the World Cup through the FIFA lottery so, for me, I lost the supply and demand battle before I even had to start scrambling to secure an airplane ticket and lodging.

Don't get me wrong; DL richly deserves all the scorn it can get for its award redemption shenanigans including a chronically broken award search engine. But complaining about the absence of "low"-level award inventory to and from the host country of the World Cup during the tournament seems to be very low on the list of what's wrong with SkyMiles redemptions.

soitgoes

Yep. I totally agree--especially when the OP notes that he/she found SkyMiles tickets for 85K for WC travel but is complaining that now it would cost more miles.

GUWonder

I had considered it very fortunate before; yet after this thread was started I decided to try my luck. [If I can manage to use a reasonable amount of miles to get enough relatives in and out of South Africa at around that time and accommodation enough, then I'll have tickets to the World Cup matches too.] It's pretty clear to me -- as it is to you -- that the use of DL miles being used on DL flights is just not going to be reasonably available at reasonable prices. Perhaps DL can exploit the World Cup like DL exploited the Olympics in order to play with award pricing/availability yet again.

Winkdaddy

Curious...did you find this by using Delta.com, NWA.com, or by calling in?

AndyTLe

DL.com using the calendar. Looked up DCA-PVG and found multiple options.

fti

I was fortunate last spring to find low level award tickets on NW/AS using NW miles to YVR for the olympics next February. Had to return from SEA due to availability, but that is not bad all things considered. Pretty easy to get from Vancouver to SEA (shuttle, rental car, train).