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Unless you have been living under a rock you have noticed in your inbox and from just about every blog on the planet that Delta is having a Skymiles award sale. Great, but how can we REALLY take advantage of this?
First and foremost, if you are a Platinum or Diamond Medallion, and have booked award seats in coach, call and have the medallion line check if your already booked routes are part of the sale and you can for free have them reissue the tickets at the lower amount and you get the difference in Skymiles back! As long as you have not started flying the ticket or it is not inside 72 hrs of departure this should work great.
The next way we want to look at gaming this is with the 3 for 2 award trick that more than likely will be going away once Skymiles2015 begins next year. However, as I mentioned, and as Delta mentioned, you can call with enough information in hand and get reps to manually issue the ticket for the right amount of points. Worst case, as I have done in the past, have them deposit enough miles into your account to make it work correctly. Either way is just fine as this is Delta’s problem.
So, as you can see, and due to the “BUG” mostly affecting business class tickets so far, I can pull up round trip from DTW-LAX-DTW for the sale price and then add on in January a one way to MIA and it still prices at “low level” that is 25,000 but it SHOULD price at 21,000 under the current sale price i.e. all legs at low level. So, you will have to call, as we have been directed, and you should NOT have to pay any booking fees over the phone as DELTA CORP itself has told us to CALL since Delta.dumb is broken and does not work and they are not going to fix it as it is part of Skymiles2015 that is on the way soon anyway.
Then, before the sale expires (or after if you want to spend more miles), book a return from MIA to DTW and then add another round trip that is farther away than MIA and you will have 3 trips for the price of 2 in coach and if you divide it out the total will come to 14,000 each.
Before you even ask, I have looked over the T&C of the promotion, and it simply says “Contact a Delta agent or see Award Travel Rules for details.” Well award travel rules have not changed just because they are offering the tickets for less Skymiles! And the linked page says:
“Open jaw travel is permitted for Award Travel. To be eligible, the mileage between the open jaw points must be less than or equal to the total mileage flown between any other trip in the itinerary (origin to destination). A double open jaw is not permitted.” – Delta.com
So, we should be 100% good to go, all you have to do is find 3 trips you want to take on Skymiles before 18FEB2015 with the middle trip being shorter than the other two. Not a bad deal!
Also keep in mind you can score an upgrade on an award ticket if you are GM or higher. It does not always happen as you are far down the upgrade fare class list with award tickets, but as a Diamond I did upgrade on my last award ticket I booked with points!
Happy award bookings everyone and oh if this seems all too frustrating to you to spend the time to do, then just use ADAM and have him and his team book it all for you! – René
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Rene, when will you do a post on status matching on Alaska or American (or other options) for us delta flyers who have had enough?
Hi Rene,
Is there a name or department or press release that can be referenced when calling Delta, lest they play dumb? I booked an Asian trip for next year, wanting a stopover, but was repeatedly told no, even at supervisor level. I’d like to call back to try to get the itinerary adjusted, but the more details to back me up, the better.
@Christian – you can try what someone posted on FT that said: “refer them to the res policy update on the dlnet homepage” and if that does not work HUCB again and again till you get someone who knows what is going on.
Thanks Rene. Just got a 10K refund on my son’s Thanksgiving ticket – same seats including extra I paid for EC for him to make a tight SLC connection.