This is great: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta-skymiles/1339239-great-video-dl-award-booking-process.html David
It appears that it shows as "low" pesos if any flight segment is in low pesos, not if all of them are.
Thank you for posting this video, because it clearly documents that this illusion of attempting to book an award with Delta has also happened to someone else too! But I still have hope that I will be able to use my Skymiles for an award to Asia in the near future. Again, thanks for posting it.
I agree that it should not work that way. But I have been told by Delta tech support that the award calendar works as designed and that there are no plans to fix it. Given the long and sordid history of this tool, I'm inclined to believe that. David
If rumors are to be believed, it will be retired by the end of the year and replaced with the much anticipated dreaded Fare-Based Award Ticket Redemption.
the only advantage of that might be that those 40k awards we always see might be CHEAPER at a ~35k level... if the new system were to work correctly!
Not to be an apologist for Delta. But I have had similar problems with booking (tho not to SYD). The problems came not from the flight to SYD but one of the Domestic Segments selling out. So in the case featured, it is possible that one of the MKE to LAX,etc. was the flight sold out. HOWEVER, if the booking engine says that the flight is available for 150,000 miles, Delta should honor it!
I ought to do a new video. Looking at LAX-SYD in BE early next year. Doesn't matter if I use the calendar or not - I am offered mostly segments in coach at 100K round trip with staggering fees of $400 to $800. But then if you look waaaay down at the bottom of the flights being offered, there is actually a segment in BE at 150K round trip with $120 in taxes. I'ts not the calendar, it's not even stingy availability. It's just delta.com FUBAR. The least it could do would be to offer me a round trip at 675K miles.
Actually, you've discovered something astounding: VA award seats in Y are now bookable on DL.dumb! The higher taxes/fees was the tip, but I can replicate this. I'm off to see if I can find J inventory now.
Wonder if it's just to SYD or other routes - please let us know what you find. There has been a lot of J inventory LAX-SYD lately. I just put one on hold, but had to go down to the bottom of the screen to find the J seats. It was offering like 11 Y options with huge surcharges and 1 J option with the normal $120 or so.
Whoa! VA J inventory is also available online now. It's weird, because it comes up without a carrier name in front of the flight number, and it's not consistent that it shows the footnote for "Operated by Virgin Australia Airlines", but it definitely shows Y and J award inventory.
Hmm. I'm not finding any VA offerings in J, but it looks like MEL is bookable. Is the $800 + in fees correct? And on 21 February, who's running Delta 24 LAX-MEL on a 773. Obviously not Delta, but delta.com isn't telling me either. Maybe it's all a foulup. I called tech support to report the problems with J not showing and the huge fuel charges. Should be fixed any minute now.
I found MEL-LAX and was able to mock book all the way through. The outbound was LAX-SYD on DL metal. MEL-LAX also offered a ton of connecting options through SYD and BNE. What I can't seem to get it to find is domestic Australian sectors. (SYD-AYQ gives me an error of AYQ not being valid, while SYD-MEL just takes me back to the entry screen.) Can also find CNS-LAX via SYD or BNE. It seems like it's really buggy right now (surprise!), as one-ways seem to cause it to throw up its hands in disgust. I've also had it tell me "For the same or less mileage, some flights on your itinerary were rebooked in first/business", when in reality it's switched me from business to economy
Fuel surcharges are correct The inventory I'm seeing is matching up with the VA website, so it's not totally a fluke. In terms of the DL23/34, if you notice when selecting the flight, there's no carrier in front of the number. It's only on the final itinerary screen that you see them slapping a DL in front of it. This is standard buggy DL behavior, as the mobile app (at least an older version of it) was showing me DL flight numbers for FRA-ICN-MEL//SYD-KUL-LHR. I'm pretty sure there's not a DL code on any one of those segments!
When I tried last night, I could only get Y award inventory to come up on dates when there should have been J available. However, they do have the bug of not showing a carrier worked out, and the flight numbers now show VA in front of them.
Cool - I've had good luck researching on the VA site and then calling the DM desk, who saw the same availability.
