Attempted to book a "LOW" Y reservation for myself last nite:

PIT/ATL - - on a Wednesday - 2 day stopover

ATL/FLL - - Friday

FLL/PIT - - Sunday

All showed (25K) low available doing a one-way search. Put it all together with search by schedule - - 80K!!!

The system somehow forced me into F on the first segment. I thought, maybe I clicked on "First" instead of coach by accident, so I tried again . . . .

This time, 90K miles!!! The system forced me into F for the first & second segments!

I called, and had a 25K ticket in less than 10 minutes.

Just for curiosity, I checked availability again, and tried a 3rd time after my ticket was issued, and got 80K again!

Did they charge a fee for booking by phone?

1. OP is a Diamond (I think), so phone-in ticketing charge is waived anyway.
If he were not, then saying the award calendar is broke might get him a break.

2. The award calendar and award online booking is broke.

I don't think just saying the award calendar is "broke" (sic) will get a fee waiver. I have had similar problems in the past and usually that doesn't work (one time it did). But asking for "online support" will get the fee waived.

Didn't someone post last month that award bookings were starting to implement "journey control"? If so, that might be why the OP was forced into F for the first segment.

So, why was I able to book it via phone for 25K?

My guess would be, that, we've had reports that DL.com isn't handling stopovers on domestic tix properly, so it threw me info F for the first segment. Why did it on put me in F on 2 segments the second time I tried - - I have no idea!

Also, is journey logic the same as married segments? If so, there wouldn't be married segments on flights that are 2 days apart.

Si, soy un diamante!

the award booking search engine is not broken... it works exactly the way DL wants it to!

I don't know why the phone could do it other than thinking they just pieced it together without running whatever script was preventing DL.com from pricing it the way it should.

You are right - for 1 segment journey control shouldn't kick in (journey control essentially enforces the married segments). So it likely wasn't the the culprit in for your booking.

at least this is good news for those of us worried DL was moving to stop allowing piecing awards together that won't book as low online, even though each segment is low.

Have they ever considered improving the website?

With all the money DL saves by not fixing their website, they have enough left over to pay a 6 cent dividend on each share.

Disregard--I meant to put in a new thread.

On the original booking, my return from FLL/PIT was on a 5:40 AM flight. That's all that was available, so I grabbed it, hoping to change it to a later flight if it opens up. Last week, I found a 7:05 AM FLL/LGA/PIT available at "LOW" - Called - Changed - No problem!

Late last night, I found a 9:00 AM FLL/ATL/PIT available at "LOW" - Called - - The agent says, this will require additional miles. I said that it appears to be available at the "LOW" level, and should be the same number of miles. The agent says:

"Oh, yes - - I see it now - It's available!"

WDF???

Is it my job to hold their hand and show them what they're supposed to be looking at on their monitors? I just don't get it! Is there a res agent here who can possibly explain the process as to why this kind of cr@p happens?

Yes it does i just say i cant book it online and they do it for me

My guess is that your DM agent was first looking at kettle inventory for the new flight. When you insisted that low was indeed available, he/she remembered to check for enhanced elite inventory buckets and it was there, just as you could see the seats on delta.dumb when you were logged in. Are you sure you had a genuine dedicated DM agent and not just some random overflow call center employee who doesn't normally handle DM customers? (BTW, a check of this would have been for you to log out and look for award seats on these flights or, better yet, first look without logging in and then log in and check again. Sometimes when I log out, DL somehow still remembers me for certain things, such as my employer's contract discount fares. OT, but it shocks me when this happens. When I log out, perhaps as opposed to X-ing out of delta.dumb, shouldn't it assume that I'm some random kettle when I start again by opening delta.dumb?)