I think we re 4-5 website enhancements from the tipping point miles/pts will become too easy to use

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Delta has added Korean Air award space to its website. This is huge because flight and hotel deals Korean Air has outstanding award availability flight and hotel deals in business class, and because previously there was no way to search Korean Air business inventory online. Korean Air s website doesn t even let you search unless you have enough miles in your account for the award. Expertflyer has displayed it on some intra-Asia routes only.
So someone with Delta miles had to call Delta to hunt and peck for space dealing with agents who might not be willing to make more than three searches in a call, agents who don t know where Seoul is let alone cities beyond Korean s hub, and agents who don t know that Korean is even a partner let alone how to search for their award space.
While getting award space to an international gateway using Delta miles can be a challenge it s often necessary to book your international flights on an award ticket and buy domestic flights to get to the start and back from the end of that ticket members on the West Coast especially can use Delta s partner Alaska Airlines flight and hotel deals for positioning flights.
When planning an award on Korean it s important to be aware of blackout dates. Over 40% of the year is blacked out, because Delta forbids booking any Korean flight when the airline has blackout dates for any route . So if there s an intra-Asia blackout date, Delta will impose it on North America-Seoul.
Bear in mind that the Delta award calendar is broken. Do not rely on it. Search for each origin and destination, one-by-one flight and hotel deals and day-by-day. In other words, try Washington Dulles Seoul for the potential dates you need one at a time. Then try JFK Seoul. Then try Chicago Seoul. Etc.
So in the example I show above, I searched one-way Washington Dulles Seoul just to find a flight with business flight and hotel deals class availability. The website shows the flight available, at 120,000 miles which is the roundtrip price. That s because Delta does not offer one-way awards for half the cost of a roundtrip. With Delta a one-way costs the same as a roundtrip. But if the flight is available, it is available with partners there is only low availability, no such thing as medium or high mileage costs.
Find the flights you want, one at a time, and then try to piece them together with multi-city search. flight and hotel deals If you can t get the flights to come up or price properly with multi-city search, that s a failure of the website (the Delta award search website is broken very broken) then write down the flights you ve found that are available and call Delta.
If you ve found Korean flights available on the Delta website, and the agent on the phone says it isn t available, hang up and call back. The agent is wrong, something that s quite common with Delta agents. It s not worth arguing or educating them. Just move on to the next agent.
flight and hotel deals Korean s award space to Seoul and beyond Seoul is really outstanding. This makes Delta miles much more valuable. I ve long said that Delta miles though they are overall the most frustrating to work with are the best for awards to Australia (not because of space on their own Los Angeles Sydney flight and hotel deals flight, but because they also partner with Virgin Australia which offers a good business product and good availability, especially on the Los Angeles Brisbane route albeit with fuel surcharges).
Delta also allows flying Korean from the US to Australia, and a stopover in Seoul is permitted. And it appears that US departures are not incurring fuel surcharges , so that s a huge positive as well.
Whereas Delta imposes fuel surcharges on awards that originate in Australia, and on several Asian carriers, as well as awards departing the US on a handful flight and hotel deals of carriers flight and hotel deals and had been adding them to Korean awards as well of late Delta imposes more fuel surcharges than any other US airline, only American among other US carriers adds them at all and then only to British Airways awards and a very small surcharge on Iberia awards.
@Gary @dave KE does use full flat (Prestige Sleeper, they call it) business seats on IAD-ICN. It s a mix of 772 and 77W, but they have two 772 subfleets, one with Prestige Sleeper and one with Prestige Plus (angled flat). What I see in ExpertFlyer shows the full flat seats daily to IAD. (Look for selling J as the business class full fare. They use C for routes with angled flat seats.) It is a 2-3-2 arrangement, but great seats and service overall.
@gpapadop ORD and JFK should both have flat beds. As I indicated above, look for J class for sale on ExpertFlyer. Alternatively, you can use the Koreanair.com website and look under On Board for Flight Schedule with New Aircraft. You want the Prestige Sleeper seats.
@Sj Not a travel blog, just try to get rid of my SkyMiles as soon as I have enough to get to Asia/Australia/New Zealand with a preference for KE travel. To do so requires being on top of things, given the potential for rapid devaluation. I
I think we re 4-5 website enhancements from the tipping point miles/pts will become too easy to use and people will actually redeem more, making them unprofitable for the programs, and having flight and hotel deals to charge surcharges and make chart adjustments further.
I was able to book a biz class ticket the exact dates I wanted in March IAD Auckland! Finally able to burn all those old northwest miles I had laying around. The website doesn t show Auckland as a viable route but after 7 delta reps (first one wanted me to go in coach on air tahiti nui for 130K) I scored the ticket. 150K RT
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