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Welcome to a weekly feature on the Eye of the Flyer blog. Each week this series covers in a “rookie” way either a Delta or travel related theme and attempts to break down to a basic level each topic. You can read up on all the previous posts HERE. Now on to this week’s feature.
Oh René, you have really LOST IT today. You are really putting in print that it is OK to book a SkyMiles ticket for LEVEL 5 redemption for almost 1/3 of a million SkyMiles? How can you even start to justify this?
Let me start with some facts. I think anyone who books last minute award for LEVEL 3+ and then shamelessly says when you compare this to spending the money to buy the ticket then look at the value you get is misinformed! What utter HOGWASH. You are all but committing award point malpractice if you do this or promote this in my opinion. I personally only book Level 1 and when I absolutely must Level 2 to get the perfect flights.
But there times I think it is OK to book higher priced awards but with some real caveats. First off I would ONLY recommend this if you are a Platinum or Diamond medallion and can change and or redeposit your points all you want. After all, you have no intention of flying these high priced awards, you are just booking them as an absolute backup option.
And that brings us to the real point of today’s post if you have something booked, and Delta offers an award sale (that ends tomorrow btw) or as you search now and then you find a lower priced award, change it. This really goes for any award that is not already locked in at the lowest possible award level. Sure it is a bit of a pain to keep searching some trip you have already booked but you do realize that using Delta.com and the Fly Delta App on Gogo is free so why not use a short hop to log on and see if something has changed and you can score a lower priced award?
What if you are NOT a medallion. Here is where the mighty schedule change can help you as well. If you have a change, and don’t call and mess with it, there are times it will stick “messed up”, if you will, in your My Delta list of flights. Save that chance for a free change when your search results yield a lower award amount and then call and see about both fixing the schedule issue as well as getting some points back at the now lower award price. – René
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I booked Atl-den, non-stop, for 2 in July at 90000 points and this is just main cabin space, not even C+ seats. It was only 5000 less points to fly through Cincy. I have checked at least twice a week and the number of points needed has only gone up. What’s even worse is I could pay for seats for the same flight for just under $400. And, yes, there are lots and lots of available seats so it’s not like anybody is rushing the gate for this flight. I’m not happy but I’ve got points to burn so I’m burning them. Exactly what I believe delta wants me to do!