Why I Avoid Delta Award Redemptions

February 17, 2010 - Rick

Living in the South means everything flies through Atlanta and using Delta Airlines. I don’t actively collect Delta airlines miles unless they are a steal. I did some research to show you why:

We go to Hawaii several times per year. Our favorite island is Kauai and the airport is LIH. Savannah (SAV) is served by all the biggies including American, Continental, Delta, United, and US Airways. I checked four of the five leaving out US Airways to save time.

Here are my results for the airlines SAV-LIH for the months of October, November, and December in first-class for two passengers. I did not log into any of the airline websites except for Delta (to give them the benefit of the doubt) as I have Gold Status with Delta. I thought it may help the results. It didn’t help them.

Here are the number of days two seats are available for first class awards at the lowest award level: United 100K, American 75K, Continental 90K, Delta 75K.

December:

American departures 6 American returns 3
United departures 11 United returns 29
Continental 15 Continental returns 27
Delta departures 0 Delta returns 0

November:

American 10 days out and 12 days return
United 19 days out 23 days return
Continental 19 days out and 10 days return
Delta 0 days out and 0 days return

October:

American 0 days out and 9 days return
United 21 days out and 20 days return
Continental 14 days out and 5 days return
Delta 0 days out and 0 days return

You have now seen the benefits of the three tier award chart for Delta Airlines. In fact, I checked Savannah to Lihue for 2 First class award tickets all the way back to March. There is not one single day either outbound or return on Delta at their lowest award level of 75,000 miles.

Not one single day at 75K or 105K. 135,00 miles is the next tier level award. Those are available most days.

Sure this is only one departure city and one destination. But it is a southern city where Delta is the predominant carrier and Lihue is a very desirable destination served by all the majors.

As a side note: I tried to find a 25K award to Phoenix and was told by the calendar the miles would be 25K, but when I hit the search the lowest I came up with was 32,500 miles for the roundtrip. I only found the 25,000K options by hitting the back button and all of a sudden magically the 25,000 mile options showed.

Sad Delta. Very sad.

Anonymous

Delta's online award calender is misleading. There is usually much more availability than it will display – one trick is to search *segment by segment* for one-way awards, view the calender, confirm availability by clicking a date, then assembling an itinerary.

One huge drawback to Delta's "award calender" is that it cannot handle overnight flights. For example, search MSP-BKK. Nothing will appear as "low" – but if you search and secure dates for MSP-NRT, NRT-BKK, and select by SCHEDULE once you know the times and dates that are cheap for one ways, you can force Delta to sell you the desireable award ticket.

Hawaii is no exception – just play with the one way trick and you'll have mastered Delta's rigmarole.
Anonymous

I am PM with Delta. The old NWA site was much better. Could find flights for much less points. Now, you must do it the old way. Call, and call and call and find a rep who will be nice and look forever to find the cheap seats. For some reason, only their screens can find the low point seats.
Anonymous

Excellent comment – so glad you opened up the blog to input, Rick!
Anonymous

Delta has clearly changed the availability from last year, after the merger. Last August I was able to book online 7 (yes, seven!) business/first class seats for my family on the same flights into HNL and out of KOA for June 2010. I must say it was a miracle, because now it is almost impossible to find even two FC seats. I am glad I burned all my delta miles on that trip.
Anonymous

Another way to use Delta miles is IF you have the Delta AM EX card, is to use the pay with miles feature. Coach is the best value of course, because I have seen fares around $300 to the Bahamas and Cancun. These would require 30,000 miles to pay with miles, but is actually less than the minimum 35k award.
Anonymous

My family is going to Hawaii in March from MSP – a Delta hub for god's sake. Awards available even just for an upgarde: 2 outbound, 0 return.
Dean

Just FYI, I think you would need to have a rental of 5 days or longer to earn the full 2,500 (your wording of weekend rental is vague on number of days). Each Hertz rental day only generates 150 miles (50 base * 3 bonus) until you hit five days in which case you would get 1,500 miles (500 base * 3 bonus) and then the 1,000 bonus on top of that.

Taking $37.50 as a constant price for the rental period, you would earn:
3.3 cents/mile for 1 day (1,150 miles)
2.9 cents/mile for 2 days (1,300 miles)
2.6 cents/mile for 3 days (1,450 miles)
2.3 cents/mile for 4 days (1,600 miles)
and only pass the mythical 2 cents/mile barrier for a full 5 days (2,500 miles). If it really is $37.50 for a 5 day rental, that seems like an incredible steal in and of itself. I might be missing something in the Ts and Cs so I defer to your analysis.
David

As a Gold Medallion, I know better than to try to find DL awards using their terrible award search engine. You can use what Anonymous said or just call and get a great elite agent that will do the work for you. Sure it might take some time on the phone, but it's worth it. It got me 2 business class seats from the DC area to Indonesia to visit a friend.

Now all of this said, there's no excuse in my opinion for how terrible their award search is. I've repeatedly complained to them about it. They keep saying that they're working on it.
Anonymous

I did a similar search just last night for a trip to Boston. Delta needed 32500 miles for award travel but SPG award travel showed it available for 25000 for the exact same Delta flights.
MYRflyer

I'm in the same boat rick. Live in MYR and check the "award calendar" often, lately any roundtrip flight out of MYR via Delta involving more than a flight to ATL provides no available flights. But if you search for one-way to atl there is availability, PLENTY of flights with award availability.

Anonymous, when you say force delta to sell you the desireable award ticket, is there a way to this while logged in on delta.com, or does it require calling the 1-800 # ? I would rather avoid the 20.00 phone fee, maybe thats why delta will not update the site, all those extra 20.00 fees are adding up!

Why I Avoid Delta Award Redemptions

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