I don't work at the Int'l Awards Desk, nor have I ever redeemed an int'l award tckt, so I don't know if this is good or bad.

Just wanted to bring the chg to your attention. (This applies for travel N.A. to Europe)

Just as the title says, you'll now be required to book it as AF and redeem an AF award (for trvl on/after 31MAR2002). Now I have no knowledge or idea for that matter, but maybe the award inventory will remain the same? (one can hope, right?)

Maybe this will be temporary since ATI was recently awarded to SkyTeam (I have no idea).

I'm open to hear comments on the change.

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Thank you for letting me participate.

[This message has been edited by Russ21Atl (edited 01-30-2002).]

Hi Russ,

My family and I already have Delta tickets (four award, two paid) for a trip in June to France. One flight segment is on AF. Are these tickets still valid?

Bruce

Bruce, I'm off until Saturday. I be sure, I'd call SMS and verify. Again, I have no idea; they may rebook you, or leave as it is. I'll check if you want me to on Sat.- just send me an e-mail.

I called SMS and they told me it's OK. The flight (CDG-NCE) is already booked as AF.

Bruce

What does this mean in plain English -- Queens or otherwise

I'm a little confused by this. Suppose I wanted to book PHL-CDG, DL flights 8703-8702. Before I called up Delta and had them issue the award.
Are you saying now I need to call AirFrance US, tell them I want to book PHL-CDG (which real flights are AF 379-378), and they'll deduct the miles from my Skymiles account (I don't have a separate AF account).
If this is true, does this mean for DL codeshare flights with AF, we need to call up AF directly? Or/and, does it mean we can use DL Skymiles to book AF reward tickets? If so, would that mean Skymiles could be used to book the 160k miles 2-1 Concorde special award thru the end of March?

Thanks.

Jeff

Apparently not. Based on my experience, you can get an AF award from Delta, using your Delta miles. It's just a different code than the Delta awards. In my case, the award codes are VF21 and VF22, both AF awards, apparently, because we are taking an AF flight in the middle of our vacation.

What happened is you can't use a Delta award to book a flight operated by AF, even if it's a code-share. Not a big deal, really, but nice to know.

Bruce

Still not sure I understand. Using my previous example, before I could use DL award D131 (DL US-Europe) for my DL-coded (though AF-operated) PHL-CDG flight. Now I can't do this? So, instead I need to use award F131 (AF US-Europe), and specify the real AF flights?
If so, maybe just a procedural change, doesn't seem to affect my flight choices.

What happens if you have mixed flights, ie. AF metal PHL-CDG, but DL metal CDG-ATL-PHL?

Jeff

I'm not Russ (obviously!), but my understanding is that any award travel involving an AF flight must be ticketed using an AF award code. If you have mixed DL and AF flights, as I do, you must use an AF award code.

I don't know if this has any implications regarding availability, but I would guess not.

Bruce

Bruce, please clarify one point, as I am also confused. Are we to call AF directly and ask them to transfer Skymiles to get the AF award? It sounds to me that somewhere in this change of venue, we are going to have a reduced availability of AF awards. There is no way that AF will give us equal treatment.


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Let me take a stab at it:

I think what they're saying is that in the past if you were redeeming a Delta SkyMiles award for travel to Europe (i.e., not an AF partner award obtained using SkyMiles but instead an honest-to-goodness Delta award using SkyMiles), you could book your flight using any Delta seat -- whether the seat was a seat on a real Delta jet or whether the seat was a Delta-coded seat on an Air France jet (assuming, of course, that award seats were available).

Under this new rule, if you're booking using a Delta award, you'll have to book it on Delta metal only. You won't be able to use a Delta award on Delta-blocked seats on Air France-operated flights, because Delta isn't going to dedicate any of its block of seats on those Air France flights to award travel.

So, if there are three flights to Paris from Atlanta (two on Delta and one on AF) and the AF flight suits your schedule better, you won't be able to redeem a Delta award on it (even though you can buy a Delta seat on that Air France flight using Delta-blocked seats). Instead, you'll have to redeem a SkyMiles Partner award (i.e., AF award using Delta SkyMiles) to fly on the Air France flight.

You'll still call Delta reservations (not Air France), but at the voice prompt you'll push the key for International Partner Awards rather than Delta awards.

OK, let me break it down right quick. And I hope I'm right.

There seems to me that there are a couple of ways to redeem int'l award travel.

1. Delta flights and codeshares.
2. Partners (i.e. SQ)

OK, so previously, we all called the DL desk and asked them to book the award for us, and we could change our seats online for DL8xxx flights, etc. etc.

BUT... under this new rule, AF award tickets will have to be issued just like a SQ award would, using a partner award. So we won't be able to view the seats online, etc. etc.

Am I right? I feel like I reiterated what the other Jeff said.

Doesn't make a huge difference, just as long as the award levels haven't changed.

Although I do question why.

Hope that makes sense.

mspman,

You're basically right as I see it, but I would point out that one already books AF-coded flights just like an SQ award. The thing being eliminated is being able to book Delta awards using Delta seats on flights operated by AF; those award seat inventories will cease to exit.

I think this must have something to do with the anti-trust deal, since now all the seats will come out of some real time pool rather than strict blocks. It probably makes sense to attribute costs/revenues/expenses for award tickets to the operating carrier.

But here's where the problem lies.

Once ticketed we will no longer be able to change the routing to include the routes flown by the partners metal. Therefore, no more waitlisting on those flights for when they are not available at time of booking.

I can see a lot of difficulties in this, especially for us west coast based pax.

And I thought Skyteam was supposed to make all the member airlines appear as one to the customer. This seems like a step in the opposite direction.