even if i were to accumulate 60k miles, it seems i can't seem to find any us-asia trips at the minimal tier even 360 days out.
in the past i've managed to book trips at this level a couple months out, now the majority of the trips are in the middle priced range.
why does skyteam have such a high capacity control relative to the star alliance? i was able to redeem 60k (<1 month in advance) from sfo-hkt-pek-sfo and then pek-tpe-pek all for 60k+30K. why does skyteam make it such a pita for people to redeem the miles??
how can i maximize the value of my 57k miles or 62k if i choose to do the budget promo w/ no assurance of a low priced redemption

It's going to depend mostly on your travel pattern. I also consider DL miles pretty worthless, but 60,000 is worth, at a minimum, a last minute domestic flight. If you ever find the need to take one of those, the miles will come in handy.

Seems like you are more interested in a US-Asia trip, however. If you haven't already, try looking at partners like Korean and Malaysian. Also try searching starting in cities other than SFO. I think they now fly from SEA, PDX, and of course cities in the midwest and east coast. An unconventional routing may not show up in the award calender, even if it is available.

I've wondered the same thing about my relatively worthless skymiles. But I just discovered their new (?) marketplace site and found you can get some excellent value out of your miles via hotels. You might check this option out...
https://travelmarketplace.delta.com/travel/arc.cfm
They have tons of hotel choices nearly anywhere in the world and in places where my Starwood or Hilton points are of no help. Now, instead of avoiding skymiles earnings I may just go for more knowing I can use them this way.
There are other merchandise purchasing options too but I think for me, the hotel option is the way to go.
Haven't checked into the car rental option yet but I'm sure most any of these options will be easier to get value from compared with their pitiful flight awards.

I suspect availability is not nearly as bad as you think on KE and CZ. Just that Delta destroyed NWA's fantastic award booking web site. I suspect actually requesting specific KE or CZ flight numbers on specific dates over the phone will yield much better results than looking on-line or calling up and asking "do you have anything to Bangkok in the next year".

I have found good avialblilty to asia on KE using Delta miles at the 60000 rate even fairly near travel dates.That is in fact my prefered way to use my Delta miles. rbc100

Well have you seen the blog from TMTravelWorld? so really if you want to travel to ASIA, this would make it nearly impossible to book for KE!
I might as well use my miles to hotels now. Thanks for the tip!


Delta Miles Block KE award redemption for most time of the year now!
My friend just made a discovery. KE award ticket always has blackout date,but by geographic area

2010
From USA and CANADA
MAY 22 � JUL 11, DEC 11 � DEC 26

From Korea, Japan, Asia, Oceania, Europe and Middle East to USA, CANADA,
BRAZIL
JUL 24 � SEP 05, SEP 17 � SEP 20

International flights from Korea, Japan, Asia, Oceania, Europe and Middle
East
Jul 16 � AUG 15, SEP 17 � SEP 26, DEC 24 � DEC 31

DOMESTIC KOREA
JUL 16 � AUG 22, SEP 18 � SEP 26, DEC 30 � DEC 31

However, what Delta did is they block ALL award redemption on KE during blackout period regardless of Geographic region. Basically that means SEP 18 � SEP 26 is blackout date for Domestic Korea, but with DL miles, all KE award to anywhere will be blocked

Korean Air
2010
MAY 22 � JUL 11
JUL 16 � SEP 05
SEP 17 � SEP 26
DEC 11 � DEC 31

2011
JAN 01 � JAN 09
FEB 01 � FEB 07
MAY 20 � JUL 03
JUL 13 � AUG 15
SEP 10 � SEP 14
DEC 09 � DEC 31

No wonder people complain about DL miles=useless

"excellent value"? Works out to less than .8 cents per mile.

5 star hotel in Bucharest at a best price for a single room at around $150 or about 10,000 skymiles. 3 nights in Bucharest for 30,000 skymiles saving me $450. Much more valuable to me than not finding any award seats to where I want to go for that many miles. For me, yes, relatively speaking, "excellent value" without a doubt.
But let's not get caught up in that redundant and tired challenging of one another's interpretation of "excellent value".

how can you check KE availability?

You need to call.

If you have any use for a domestic trip, use 50K of the miles for two RT tickets within the US. Low/saver availability is widely available for many routings... I redeem dozens per year. If you have sufficient status with DL, you can leverage the value further by redeeming, with no fees, for last-minute flights that often cost a lot otherwise, sometimes achieving CPMs of 3+.

I actually was in a similar situation recently with 35,000 miles on Delta I wasn't going to use. On delta's website, you can use miles to book hotel and/or car rental. If you don't have enough miles, you can use miles + $. I ended up using my miles to book a five-star hotel in Rome. Saved me some $$ on the exchange rate, and got rid of the miles that were going to expire soon.

If you're looking for a trip to Asia, I suggest calling up and being flexible. Sometimes you may need to prompt the agent to look for KE, MH or CI flights, but with a little patience and persistence, I was successful in finding flights.

Just because you don't see availability on the website doesn't mean there's not availability. The web engine is really terrible.

The miles can be used effectively but it takes research. The trick is to forget about Delta flights and use skyteam partners. Delta flights are almost always at "medium" or "high" levels, whereas most partners usually have only one level, which is "low". (for now at least...).

Use the airline route mapper tool (http://arm.64hosts.com/) and set the filter for skyteam airlines and check flights to/from your destination/departure airports to anywhere near your departure/destination. Focus on the major flights (trans-atlantic or transpacific) first, and find some flights that work. Next use KVS or ExpertFlyer (depending on the airline) to check availability of seats in their award classes. Once you find flights and dates that have availability on the partner(s), call up Delta. You'll need to tell the agent to book the award flight by flight, but you'll get your ticket for low miles. In some cases the airlines will be better than Delta, in some cases worse. But this works.

Combine them with my useless 12K Delta Miles! LOL