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Anyone who has been reading this blog for years knows that every single Saturday, if you have Delta tickets booked, that you simply must look at all your reservations to see if Delta Air Lines has messed with adjusted your tickets either a little (think a few minutes) or a lot (think a full day change). This is not due to any current tariff or other issues because this pattern of schedule changes has been going on for as long as I can remember and I am really old now! 😉
This past Saturday there was yet another day of flight changes. While none of them were a huge impact on me and I let all my changes stand because I had used the weeks before to make massive changes to vastly improve my flights that would have cost a ton more in dollars or points had I booked those new flight outright. I hope we all know the power of SCS or schedule change Saturday as a Delta frequent or even infrequent flyer.
But today I want to bring up a trend I have been seeing a lot more in 2025 that has not been the fact over the past decade plus of being a Delta focused blogger. What is this? Finding dramatically lower award prices on SCS!
This past weekend I changed a coach ticket from visiting my fellow blogger Chris in LA and was able to rebook from a coach ticket to a first class SkyMiles award for 3,000 points LESS! Now yes I had to change from a closer airport Burbank to LAX but still to be able to fly in first class for less than coach – hello – no brainer! Plus the trip is far enough out that there will likely be another SCS to let me change these new flights to more favorable routes. Oh and doing the same search the next day, Sunday, the prices have gone back up to double of what I had booked and what I had seen for most of my searches for the past few weeks.
This is not a one-off event as the coach tickets that I just dumped for the first class ones were tickets that I had booked on another Saturday that were much lower than anything I had seen for weeks before.
Now I am not ready to call this a verifiable trend we can plan for but I would love some reader help to try to get more data points to see if there is something new in 2025 that we can use to save ourselves some points (truly needed when Delta points now have such low value).
So now it is your turn. Have you seen the trend I have seen of MUCH lower award prices on SCS? If you have not been checking please start now and bookmark this post and please report back if you too are starting to see what I have seen. – Rene
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It happened to me! I was able to change an economy flight to first and got 1,000 miles back. Had to double check what I was seeing but it ticketed! Will pay attention to this now. I did not know about SCS so now I will pay attention. Thanks!
Haha, Rene, Im not even old, but I feel the pull of SCS! Seriously though, this trend of lower awards is exactly why I live for these Saturdays. Its like a treasure hunt, but with points! Who knew changing flights could be so much fun? Thanks for the heads-up – now Im officially on the lookout for my next upgrade opportunity. And yes, Ill be sure to bookmark this post and report back if I find any more hidden gems. Happy point hunting, everyone!