SkyTeam Awards Availability Across Airlines
 

I recently moved from ORD where *A and OW reigned supreme for flights and I am trying to figure out how award availability works for SkyTeam.

I am looking to fly MSP-AMS on 24May18 and when I search for awards on AF I see 1 flight that is nonstop for the day (KL656 @ 25,000 pts + fees). When I search on DL, I see 3 nonstops (DL 160, DL 162, DL 164 @ 39,000 miles, 29,000 miles, and 29,000 miles + fees). I would ideally book one of the Delta nonstops with AF points, but it does not seem possible as the inventories are not matching.

Does how does SkyTeam work award availability? Is it fare class based like *A and OW or is it something else that makes finding partner awards much tougher?

The only non-stop DL service ORD-AMS is the KL flight code-shared with DL. The other DL services you see are the usual robbery practiced by US airlines selling so-called direct flights (as opposed to non-stop flights) which in fact involve a connection in one of the hub (ATL, DTW, MSP, etc); with the 2 flights bearing the same flight number. But it is a real connection with a change of plane and crew.

first of all, stop thinking in terms of "Skyteam" as a single, monolithic entity, especially when it comes to rewards and FFP issues.

"Skyteam" - just like "oneworld" and "Star Alliance" - is a group of several different airlines, all operating different FFPs, each with different currencies, different earn/burn rules & rates, and with different availabilities.

ALL alliances operate in the same manner. As regards frequent flyer redemption, it is in theory possible to redeem your frequent flyer miles, issued by one alliance member, on a service operated by another alliance member. That is all.

Whether and if you can redeem using one programme's miles on a different airline's flight will depend on many other things. To boil down to a simple binary selection - as you appear to do here - that a seat is available to all, or that no seat is available - is not how it works on *any* alliance.

Just because one seat is available at one price in one programme of a particular alliance-member's programme, does not automatically mean that the same ticket is available to all the other users of the other FFPs of the other airlines in that same alliance. It also does not mean that the "price" is or should be the exact same number (which is like suggesting that a ticket priced for cash at US$100 should also be available at €100, GB£100, CA$100 and JPY100, i.e. the same "Number" regardless of the currency (Skymiles, Flying Blue miles, Aeromexico Club Premier points, etc etc).

It happens very frequently here that posters report their "results" of doing an award search using a different airline, and then seem to expect they can obtain the same results when using the booking tool of a completely different airline. This is to totally overlook the fact that frequent flyer miles are not a completely liquid, convertible currency in the style of cash. That sort of "research" may be useful when looking to buy the cheapest CASH ticket - but it is pointless when looking to spend FREQUENT FLYER MILES.

If you have specific requirements for a flight, then you should use the currency that is designed for such purposes - CASH.

If you want to use your frequent flyer miles, then you must accept that the airlines will put limitations on how and when you can spend them, and on how many you need to spend. Looking up, say, Delta's restrictions on a particular redemption you are thinking of making, is a pointless exercise if the currency you have to spend is Flying Blue miles, or anything other than Skymiles.

Keep your Frequent Flyer miles for "flexible" trips in which you can play around [destination, dates, routing, timings] with what is on offer via your chosen frequent flyer programme. It pays to be flexible when using frequent flyer miles.

When, instead, your choices are limited, then you are better off using cash for those trips.

One last tip: expect, that for any airline in any alliance, the chances of being able to redeem a seat, or to get a "better" price, on any particular airline are far greater if you are using the native FFP of that airline. So, if your expectation is to always or mostly redeem on a particular Airline A, then you would be better off using the FFP of Airline A, rather than using the FFP of any other member airline in the same alliance.

In theory, flight availability should not be the same for the home program, since they have the flexibility to offer you more options for more miles. Especially for those programs that are (or are moving towards) revenue-based schemes like Delta and FlyingBlue (AF/KLM). So it makes sense that using AF miles you can do a KL flight which is not available on Delta as well as seeing flights on Delta using DL miles that are not available to FB members. Those would not necessarily be offered reciprocally.

I do not agree with irishguy28 that there is absolutely no commonality in the SkyTeam programs; there certainly is across other alliances. In other words, if you are looking at using miles you have with Korean or Alitalia or China Southern to redeem MSP-AMS for a direct flight on either DL or KL, the results should be the same. If a ticket is offered by one program for a flight on another SkyTeam airline, it should be offered by all. And DL or AF/KL should also offer the flights you could find on KE, AZ or CZ in addition to more flights on their own metal for higher prices.

I tried using Alitalia for MSP-AMS on May 24 and came up empty (i.e. no award flights available), so it makes sense that you can only use you FB mile for a KL flight or DL miles for a DL flight. Those awards are special (higher priced) only for members of the home program. Though to be fair, this thread was started a month ago and so there may have been availability then that is missing now. But DL still has flights for 39K (and more) so again, that is what is being offered to their own members at a higher price.

You should be happy. At the moment it is not possible to spend Dynasty miles (CI) for skyteam upgrades since some changes made 2 years ago. And still waiting for it to come back. And yet other skyteam members can still redeem upgrades on CI.
Quite annoying.