Rookie Wednesday: How to mine hidden helpful data Delta does not want you to see?

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.

Are you a stupid idiot (clearly you are not since you are reading RenesPoints)! But did you know Delta likes it’s flyers and SkyMiles members (and elites for that matter) to be stupid idiots? No really they do and I will prove that in today’s post.

Also I did not choose these words lightly. Notice that a stupid person, according to the dictionary, is someone who is either not intelligent or showing a lack of ability to learn and understand. And then we have the latter, an idiot, is someone who can be called a foolish or a stupid person.

But now I have to prove to you these are the kind of people Delta wants flying them. First off, let’s look at a very useful tool like Expert Flyer. Delta blocks you from extracting very useful data from them when other airlines allow access. Boy, it sure would be wrong for you to be able to quickly pull up inventories and such for a flight that Delta reps have access to or to learn to understand how to use such a tool. No, that would clearly be wrong. You should have to call and trust what a rep tells you or is allowed to tell you.

Then we have another tool like Award Wallet. Yeah, that one too is blocked as this useful tool does things like alert you when your seat is changed (no, Delta does not tell you things like this). It does so VERY much more but the less you know the more Delta can control you with ONLY the info they want you to know about (BTW how do you like your upgrade to a middle seat in C+?)!

We all know that Delta so disrespects its stupid idiot SkyMiles members as they hide the award charts that they CLEARLY still use (see E0 post) but it is better for you to be uninformed and make foolish choices based on limited information. But if you look at the very top of this post you will see a number of LEVEL 1, 2, 3 etc. awards but all are now “coded” with the letter N unlike before when you could see, by looking at the second letter, just what LEVEL award you were paying. That is now hidden. You do not need to understand what you are paying for as the price is the price Delta says.

Well, not really as if you take the time, once you book, to go into the reservation and look at the receipt for the trip you will see listed the extended actual LEVEL priced for each part of the trip. So, like so much with Delta, the info is there but hidden. Let’s look at another one keeping the above screen shot in mind. Notice what is missing from the shot? The real fare breakdown in airline gibberish code.

But, you can find this info also if you have the Fly Delta APP installed. Open the reservation, then click on the “View More” tab as you see above.

Then, in light gray lettering you will see the fare breakdown for each of the segments. Now I get few will need this but it is a shame Delta hides this from us on Delta.dumb when they don’t need to. But again, an uneducated flyer is one the airline likes.

Folks, it is up to us to be educated flyers. To understand how all “this” works. To make wise choices like enrolling in TSA PreCheck to have a shot at faster security times AND to use airport APPs and know what lines may be shorter and then walk to another concourse if need be. We need to never flush our valued loyalty points or allow reps to tell us bad information when we can look up what we need to know to make educated decisions. – René