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One of the great, and most times reasonably open, Delta LEVEL 1 business class awards that you can find is Los Angeles to Sydney Australia. It is a long flight but a nice way to get there direct in a decent business class product. Now getting to LAX also at LEVEL 1 space, that is another story, but we will save that for another day.
But right now, just about ANY dates for a year, if you search direct from LAX to SYD you see not one single flight that has ANY Virgin Australia LEVEL 1 space open (reminder: all partner space is LEVEL 1 or simply not there). The ONLY thing you are able to find is way over priced LEVEL 5 “OK” space for 175,000 points one-way (I don’t think it is OK at all and I think Delta even calling it in code OK is just sick).
Coach space, however, on Virgin Australia direct is just about wide open as you can see from the shot above.
Also if we happen to look at connecting flights, and you don’t mind connecting to China Eastern or China Southern (just no more stopovers, sorry, Delta destroyed that perk) then you can get to Sydney at LEVEL 1 business class pricing but it will take you, just, a, little, bit, longer, to, get, there, with, the, connection 🙁 !
Now just what is going on here. Not THAT long ago (yeah about two weeks) all Delta partner space was just GONE on Delta.dumb. Either there is a new bug or there is the very scary possible situation that Virgin is starting to pull inventory from SkyMiles members much the way KLM and Air Franc have done over the past few years. If this latter is the case we are in big trouble kids as that has been a saving grace this year with Delta pricing most business seats LEVEL 2-5.
I really hope this just is a bug. I hope it is short term bug. This situation has happened this way before and been fixed. Please be a bug, please oh please be a bug, Delta! – Rene
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It’s been gone for a while, but I think it’s because they’re putting their new business class product on those planes, and I think that will shrink the number of available seats. So they probably want to wait until they figure out when the new business class will be completely available. At least that’s my guess.
@Ric – I hope you are right. If not, yikes!
Can you route to Sydney via ICN on Korean? I don’t have expert flyer anymore, so I don’t know if it’s within the MPM.
@Bob – Yes with limited space. I had ORD-ICN-SYD held for a long time till I had to cancel it.
Very strange indeed.
I was able to get 2 x LAX-SYD-AKL all on VA in Z class for 80k each, booked fairly recently on 8/3 for February 2016.
I booked mine some time ago. I’m starting in ATL and ending in AKL for a trip next March, so was thrilled to get business class for 117,500. I only paid $18.48 in tax also. Last time I checked, the taxes has gone up to over $300 per ticket.
Sorry those awards are gone, I feel very fortunate!
I too was confounded a few days ago. In other news, is the AF General dearth why I can’t find anything from LAX-PPT?
Suspect that Ric is correct and it has to do with the new VA J product on their B777s and the resulting reduced number of seats per plane. Roll out is to be next spring and over the course of the year, so that would totally change availbility.
@Stephan – That is not a reason, however, to block ALL seats across the board.
I see space on October 26th LAX-PVG-SYD in First on Korean for award space, but Delta doesn’t show it as available. Wonder if they’re blocking premium cabin awards?
Wait, never mind, Delta doesn’t let you book true first class awards. I forgot.