Winkdaddy

I dont believe you can use Delta miles to book award tickets in their FC cabin (Kosmo class) since Delta does not have international FC cabin themselves.

ucfpinay

Whoa! I thought your dates are in the blackout period? How did you get tickets?!? Lucky dog!! Who do you call? Delta or KE?

bobbybrown

Hmm.. June 3rd LAX-ICN is definitely within blackout date, although July 5th ICN-LAX is fine. Wonder how they could arrange you award seats. And why 70K per person? Should be 60K.. maybe now DL charges little bit more and removed blackout dates? Or now partner airline officially costs 10K more? Well, all in panic.

By the way, if DL sees your post and finds out they did a mistake, your reservation may get trouble. Hope that's not happen.

randidliyo

I'm not scared if they see it. If the want to mess one of their newly mined diamonds then I say 'go for it'. I called DL and asked for the KE segments first since they're the longest and hardest to get. When I got three seats, I had them add the DL segments. The layovers are killer (6+ hours in LAX going out, 7+ coming home)

I'm on DL125/KE62 out, KE61/DL2098 return. It was 70K because I started the itin booking KE. I think their US redemptions start at 70K, I'm okay with that.

Just spend your time searching instead of posting failures in FlyerTalk. I looked and/or called every morning for several weeks. When I finally got something, I almost didn't know what to do. When it happened, I was expecting another miss and was late for an appointment. I decided to just be late and spend the time to book the ticket.

Don't give up.

Randidliyo

RealHJ

That must be then DL blocking most of KE award availability. On nwa.com KE was usually wide open (and easily bookable online) both economy and business (though economy more open, business a lot but not all of time open) if not for all then for most dates, most routes.

SirJman

I had easily booked many inter-asia tickets on KE in the past few months on KE through NWA.com.

NWA.com also allowed me to make fun routings like HKG-PUS-CJU-KIX-GMP I know those days are over

luv2ctheworld

I'd seriously doubt anyone at DL is all that interested in tracking down a single reservation. Imagine having to go through either KE's or DL's records to find one name that appears in both flights, in addition to assuming the FT handle is the actual name. It's not like the poster is selling miles or vouchers or anything that s/he did was illegal.

6+ hours is plenty of time for you to enjoy a FT LAX tradition: In 'N Out run and a visit to the beach. Rent a car and throw your luggage in it and then head north to Santa Monica/Venice or south to Manhattan/Hermosa for a few hours.

BTW, there's no reason one can't multi-task and post on FT the failure while getting shot down by Delta Skymiles at the same time

bobbybrown

I know you have more experience than me, (and for others' reference,) if LAX is not available, I found that YYZ, LAS (since ICN-LAS-LAX-ICN, only back to US is non-stop, with additional vacation in vegas !!) used to have more availability than flights. Next ones are ORD and DFW, and sometimes IAD and SEA are good. Good luck.

ucfpinay

So, it would be really stupid if I book the flights tomorrow when Jan 2nd flights open up and settle using up 135K miles for each ticket on Delta (MCO-DTW-MNL)?

ucfpinay

So, I am trying to book 7 people (3 different dep dates-12/12,15,18 but same return dates-Jan 2) to go from MCO to MNL. Tomorrow is the BIG day that Jan 2nd flights open up... 2 of those people (my mom & sis) are ready to pounce on booking the flights tomorrow at 135K each!!

But after reading many posts, it seems like it would be really stupid to do that since 1) many times DL will release lower tier award seats at a later time 2) partner airlines (like KE) haven't opened up their award seats so we would lose those lower award mile options. Of course, there are the risks of 1) DL will never release lower tier award seats 2) mileage reqts could go even higher 3) won't be able to get 7 seats for return flight

Question A: WHAT WOULD YOU DO? Based on your experience, are the risks listed not applicable? I'm new at this so I don't have a lot of experience with the ins & outs of booking award tickets and the nuances of it all.

Question B: Since I don't think I can convince my mom & sis to hold off on booking tomorrow, if they book flights tomorrow, how much of it can be changed when other flight options/lower tier awards open up? Can the ticket go from MCO-DTW-MNL to MCO-LAX-ICN-MNL and it would only cost the ticket change fee of $100 for non-statused like us?

Question C: There are 3 of us with the bulk of the Skymiles points that will be used for this ticketing. If lower tiered award seats open up, I know we can get them as long as we pay the ticket change fee. And if we pay for the redeposit fee, the mileage difference can be returned, but the question is who gets them? Does it go to the passenger's Skymiles account or the Skymiles member whose account was used to obtain the award ticket?

Question D: If a Gold Medallion member uses his miles to buy award tickets for us, do we get to enjoy his medallion membership benefits like upgrades, priority seating, priority boarding, etc? or are those limited to the GM member when they're the passenger?

Whew! I think I purged half of my brain! Thanks for reading the long post! =) Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

robbert

A: Booking early used to be the best option, it still is with AA or UA, but DL is holding back a lot of inventory for (much) later release. Skymiles are rapidly devaluating and no one will be able to tell you how this will work out in your scenario. My advice is that if you see a seat at a (miles) price that you find acceptable than go for it. If you want to hold out and wait for a better deal be prepared to wait until just weeks before departure, and only if the flight remains lightly booked.

B: Yes, if you just change dates or routing you can reprice for $100. Unless they change that and require the other leg to be available as well (not right now).

C: If you are able to reticket at a lower rate the miles would go back to the account they came from, not necessarily the traveler.

D: Elite benefits, such as better LOW mileage availability, lounge access etc. are only available for the elite member, not for someone flying on miles from an elite account.

TheMadBrewer

I'm assuming this is for a Y ticket, Medium one way and High the other? (if its 135K for J, I'd say grab it).

My rule of thumb these days is I am OK if I can get Low one way and Medium the other -- which would be 90K in your case. Bonus miles seem to be easy to come by these days so its not too hard to make up the difference.

If you are going to be transferring miles between accounts you might wait until there is a promo where you get some bonus miles thrown in.

In the past with NW I used ExpertFlyer to great advantage to find when award seats opened up -- you can set up an email alert when they do. But I don't think it has the codes for all the new award levels, though I read that the KVS tool just added that. So a subscription to one or the other may be a good investment.

tentseller

If you want to be sure that all of you will be leaving NAIA together on Jan 2,11 it would be a good idea to pay a little more for that peace of mind.

If you are a gambler then you can wait and roll the dice.

MNL flights around that time are heavily booked. I have been op-up many times during the peak travel times of Christmas holidays and beginning/end of summer.