Erasmus

Has anyone figured out the caching policy employed by the Delta.com booking engine? I do not want this to devolve into another thread bashing Delta award availability: IME Air France has pretty good availability where I want to go, and Delta.com generally mirrors the AF award buckets (as shown on ExpertFlyer, anyway).

HOWEVER, it appears that Delta does not always catch updates. If I either book or release seats from a flight, sometimes Delta.com does not update its idea of the availability. For example, if I book an award seat, confirm on EF that the inventory has reduced, Delta.com will sometimes continue to show the flight. Now, if I try to book it, the site will eventually abort saying the seat was just sold out. Fine.

The bigger problem is if I release a seat (and, again, confirm that availability has returned according to EF), Delta.com may not see the seat. Sometimes it does immediately, sometimes it will in a few moments, other times it takes 10-15 minutes to reappear. I can only presume Delta is doing some sort of caching so it doesn't requery its CRS every time it displays award choices, but how can I get it to refresh?

Anyone? Surely somebody else here hammers on the award booking tool as much as I do