DIY Archives - asthejoeflies

Part IV: Using Wikipedia to Determine Alliance Partners

Part V: Using united.com to Search for Star Alliance Award Space

Part VI: Using ANA to Search for Star Alliance Space

Part VII: Searching for Award Space Segment by Segment

Part VIII: Searching for Oneworld Award Space on aa.com

Part IX: Searching for Oneworld Award Space on ba.com

Part X: Using Wikipedia to Determine Airline Routes

Part XI: Searching Skyteam Award Space using Air France/KLM’s Flying Blue Website

Part XII: Tips for Booking an Award Ticket on delta.com

Part XIII: Booking an Award Ticket on delta.com (Advanced Techniques)

Aug 17 2014

The DIY Guide to Booking Award Tickets – Part XII: Tips for Booking an Award Ticket on delta.com

Skymiles don't have to be Skypesos if you use them correctly — Skymiles don’t have to be Skypesos if you use them correctly

To put it quite simply: delta.com is pretty broken when it comes to award searches and bookings. In fact, it’s one of the reasons people hate Delta Skymiles – they believe (incorrectly) that it’s impossible to book a ticket at low level prices or get so frustrated that they don’t bother trying. For awhile, it was easy to avoid Delta – they were the first to devalue their award chart so for awhile their premium awards were too expensive. Everyone has since devalued their charts (AA/US coming for sure), so Delta has more or less fallen back in line with the pack. This doesn’t solve the problem of how difficult it is to book awards or search for award space on delta.com – but hopefully this entry into the DIY Guide will help with that.

Delta's business class seats are actually pretty comfortable - it's booking them that's the problem — Delta’s business class seats are actually pretty comfortable – it’s booking them that’s the problem

This post will be a little bit different. For most award search engines, I don’t need to use red circles or anything like that – you can figure it out on your own. Delta is a different type of beast, though. So what I will do is go through a mock award booking step by step. Almost every step highlights either a delta.com quirk, a delta.com tip, or something I feel you need to know in order to be successful with Delta. This is long, but hopefully there should be a lot of useful stuff in here for you. I’ll summarize at the end as well. Here we go!

Tip 1: You can’t trust the delta.com award calendar

So I decided just to search for a round trip for two (searching for one person is always a lot easier – but a lot less true to real life award travel) between Boston and London in October. My first tip for you if you’re going to use delta.com – don’t trust the award calendar. There are three colors that display on the calendar – green is good, yellow is bad, blue is horrible (they stand for low, medium, and high cost awards respectively). However, the calendar will not always display green even if there is a low level award available. This commonly happens in two circumstances:

1) There is a flight on a Skyteam partner that you can take – these always price at low level but the delta.com award calendar conveniently ignores their existence

2) Any time one flight on an itinerary is only available at the medium or high price, the entire itinerary prices at that higher cost

The calendar is a lie (click to enlarge)

The reality is, there is a decent amount of award space on Delta flights flying transatlantic to Europe – it’s the domestic legs that have abysmal low level availability. If you were to click through on October 8th, you would see that delta.com doesn’t show any low level award space in business class to London from Boston – but that doesn’t mean it’s true. How can you find that space? Tip 2.

Tip 2: When flying transatlantic (or far in general), if you can’t find low level space from your home airport, start by searching from Delta hubs. Then search any other Delta airport that flies directly to where you want to go.

This isn’t a hard and fast rule but I find it works more often than not. Most of Delta’s longhaul flights originate from hubs, generally with more than one flight to the big destinations per day. There is going to be a better chance for award space from a city that has two flights to London per day than a city that only has one. When I’m doing this, I generally search JFK, DTW, MSP, LAX, SLC, SEA – in that order (I’m coming from Boston).

One way search from a Delta hub... — One way search from a Delta hub… (click to enlarge)

The trick here is, you just want to find low level award space from any city in the United States. Remember, it’s best practice to search for one way segments, and for Delta we’ll start with the longhaul transatlantic one. In this case, I didn’t have to go past DTW – there are two seats in business class on the DTW-LHR flight. Now that I had found low level award space, it was time to look for a flight from Boston to DTW aka Tip 3.

Tip 3: After you find low level award space from anywhere, find low level space from your home city to the transatlantic gateway – in economy if you have to

Basically, the existence of the low level award space on the DTW-LHR flight told me this – as long as I could get to my transatlantic gateway, DTW, using low level awards, I’d be able to fly all the way to London only paying the low price (that’s how Delta works). So now I just searched BOS-DTW – no domestic first class low level award space. But, do I really need to fly in first class for short haul flights? Personally, I don’t, so I repeated the search, except for economy.

This low level domestic first class flight doesn't get us to DTW in time — This low level domestic first class flight doesn’t get us to DTW in time

Bingo – if I’m willing to take two legs (through Cincinnati), I can get to Detroit in economy on low level awards in time for the longhaul flight to London. Now I realize that this might not be ideal for everyone, especially if you have kids. Two years ago I would have dragged Jess on this type of itinerary with me – now, I would never consider it. But it’s an option for using your Delta Skymiles at a good rate. That’s what’s important.

Moreover…

Tip 4: If Delta changes your flights by more than an hour, you can almost always change to more convenient flights for free

Delta has a pretty generous schedule change rule which you can read here. They’re also notorious for changing their schedules all the time. I also find their agents are generally pretty understanding when schedule or equipment changes happen. Therefore, yes I would be booking a two leg journey to get to my transatlantic gateway, but I’d monitor my flights and if Delta changes my schedule enough I’ll ask for a change. This works with all airlines, but in my experience I have found Delta to be one of the more accommodating ones. Still, in a worst case scenario I’m taking two short haul flights to lie flat on my way across the Atlantic.

Tip 5: You can mix classes (business/economy) on Delta awards and your round trip price will be the average cost

Unlike some other airlines, you can mix classes on your outbound and return and the cost of your trip will be the average of the two award levels. So I decided to search for an economy flight home. As you can see, there is no low level availability on October 16th. Or is there? Like I said in Tip 1: never trust this stupid calendar. Clicking through will reveal that there is a direct Virgin Atlantic flight to Boston with low level economy space!

Delta hides partner award space below its own flights, even cheaper partner awards, so make sure you select “Miles per passenger” as the method for organizing the flights (I’ll hit on this more in my forthcoming delta.com advanced techniques post). So now I’ve found low level space in business one way to London, and in economy back. Time to book.

Change "best match" to "Miles per passenger" to make sure the lowest level flights are at the top — Change “best match” to “Miles per passenger” (not pictured) to make sure the lowest level flights are at the top

Tip 6: Use a multi-city search to piece together your entire award segment by segment

As you search for your award low level segment by low level segment, write down every single low level award flight you want to take. After you’ve determined the flights you want to take, you’ve finished the hard part. Now it’s time for the fun part – booking! To do this, you want to pull up delta.com’s lovely award search tool yet again, but this time you want to do a multi-city itinerary.

The multi-city award search is surprisingly functional (click to enlarge)

Take every single segment you found and plug it in. In this case it would be BOS-CVG, CVG-DTW, DTW-LHR, and LHR-BOS. Instead of searching by “price”, ask the system to search by “schedule”. Now start your search! For each segment, you will be given a list of flights to choose from – including all low, medium, and high level award flights! Which ones do you choose?

You'll see a list like this - click on the flights you wrote down — You’ll see a list like this – click on the flights you wrote down

Well, I think you know the answer to that. But just in case – look for the flights that you wrote down that you know have low level award space and choose them! Remember to be sure to choose economy for the flights that only had low level in economy – you can’t make a single mistake otherwise the itinerary won’t price correctly.

But if you do it right – suddenly you have a low level Delta award! As you can see, this priced out to 92,500 miles round trip (Delta doesn’t allow one way awards until 2015). That is exactly the average of a round trip business and economy class low level award to Europe: (125,000 + 60,000) / 2 = 92,500. Delta even automatically upgraded the BOS-CVG leg to domestic first because low level space was available (never seen that before, btw!)

Review

Hopefully you’ve followed along okay, but here’s a quick review of the tips (paraphrased) outlined in this post.

Tip 1: Friends don’t let friends trust delta.com’s award calendar

Tip 2: Find low level transatlantic space first, even if it’s not from your hometown

Tip 3: Find low level award space from your hometown to the city in Tip 2, “downgrading” to economy if that gets you in a low level award if necessary

Tip 4: Delta schedule changes are your friend – if they mess with your flights too much you can probably switch to more convenient ones

Tip 5: You can mix class of service and save some miles if you want

Tip 6: Piece your entire itinerary together piece by piece in the multi-city award search to book

Final Thoughts

Honestly, I kind of forgot how much I enjoy booking Delta awards. It’s like hunting for big game in Africa or something, the thrill is in the challenge. I actually cherry picked a fairly easy itinerary – there are a lot tougher ones out there but I just wanted to illustrate my points. Hopefully this post shows you that you can book low level Delta awards! Is it tedious? Yes. Is it annoying? Yes. Do you have to sometimes take weird routings? Yes. Is it worth it? Well, that’s up to you. Personally, I think it is. Delta Skymiles are cheap to earn, the devil is in burning them at low level prices. Hopefully this post helps you on your way to doing just that.

I haven’t even gotten to the fun stuff you can do yet. Delta allows both an open jaw and a stopover on award tickets – something you can take advantage of to extend the value of your miles. I’ll hit on that in my next DIY post involving advanced Delta award booking techniques. Should be a real cracker! (Hopefully at least a few of you watch soccer and get the reference).

Index

Part IV: Using Wikipedia to Determine Alliance Partners

Part V: Using united.com to Search for Star Alliance Award Space

Part VI: Using ANA to Search for Star Alliance Space

Part VII: Searching for Award Space Segment by Segment

Part VIII: Searching for Oneworld Award Space on aa.com

Part IX: Searching for Oneworld Award Space on ba.com

Part X: Using Wikipedia to Determine Airline Routes

Part XI: Searching Skyteam Award Space using Air France/KLM’s Flying Blue Website

Part XII: Tips for Booking an Award Ticket on delta.com

Part XIII: Booking an Award Ticket on delta.com (Advanced Techniques)

Aug 13 2014

The DIY Guide to Booking Award Tickets – Part XI: Searching Skyteam Award Space using Air France/KLM’s Flying Blue Website

Magnifica class in Alitalia - find that space using Flying Blue! — Magnifica class on Alitalia – find that space using Flying Blue!

Skyteam award space is really annoying to find. Like, really annoying. So annoying that most people avoid it and that I got annoyed doing research for this post (okay, that was more due to computer issues). But the reality is, Skyteam has some great coverage route-wise, especially in Asia. Remember to search Wikipedia for a list of Skyteam partners or just click here.

The other reality is, while I do not have an affiliate credit link to trumpet, Delta’s program has definitely gained in relative value over the past year. Wish I had written about that when I thought of it instead of when the rest of the blogosphere started writing about it because of the current 50K credit card offers (which are good offers in my opinion, for the record). But I digress.

I got the 50K offer before it was cool...or an affiliate link — I got the 50K offer before it was cool…or an affiliate link

So I spent a couple hours this morning playing around with Air France’s Flying Blue award search tool and have learned some things about searching Skyteam award space.

Searching for award space

I covered most of this when I spoke about searching for Garuda space, but I’ll just do a quick recap here. First, you’ll need a Flying Blue account: you can sign up for Air France here or for KLM here, you just need one. Secondly you are just going to want to find “Book an award ticket” or “Book a flight with miles” or equivalent under the Flying Blue page and then just input your cities and search. Remember it’s best practice to search for one way segments. Be sure to add a second passenger if you are searching for more than one seat. Finally, make sure you check that your dates are flexible, this way Flying Blue will give you an entire month’s worth of award space.

You need to add each passenger manually (click to enlarge)

A few notes about your results. The lowest priced itinerary miles wise will be highlighted in green. The reason why there are different prices is because this search engine will also show you results on Air France and KLM which are priced at the higher “flex” rate. In general you only want the low level awards, called “classic” awards in Flying Blue.

Another thing to bear in mind is all partner space showing available using Flying Blue’s search engine should be bookable using miles from any of the other Skyteam airlines. Partner award space only shows up when it’s at the lowest award level, and generally in alliances that low level award space is bookable by any partner. So if I see an economy classic award from Boston to Paris on the Flying Blue award search, I can book that using Delta Skymiles, or Korean Skypass miles, or Alitalia, etc. The only exception is first class flights on partners are not bookable using Delta Skymiles and first class flights on Air France are not bookable by any partners.

Third, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I found the award search to be glitchy at times. Like when I clicked on a date I’d get a “technical difficulties” message and couldn’t see the flights. I think the calendar is correct though, there should be flights on that date, you just might have to call to find them.

Can _____’s award space be found on Flying Blue’s award search?

This is what I spent the bulk of my morning doing. Here are my results, although if you have had a different experience, please let me know!

Aeroflot – Yes, but only intra-Europe (couldn’t find a JFK-SVO flight that I KNEW had economy space)

Aerolineas Argentinas – Yes

Aeromexico – Yes

Air Europa – Yes

Air France – Yes

Alitalia – Yes

China Airlines – No

China Eastern – Yes

China Southern – No

Czech Airlines – Yes

Delta Airlines – Yes

Garuda Indonesia – Yes

Kenya Airways – Yes

KLM – Yes

Korean Air – Yes

Middle East – No

Saudia – Yes

Tarom – Yes

Vietnam Airlines – Yes

Xiamen Airlines – No

As you can see, you can find almost all Skyteam partner award space on Flying Blue!

Did I know this airline existed? No. Can you search for it on Flying Blue? Yes!

Final Thoughts

If you’re searching for Skyteam award space, your best bet is to use Air France or KLM’s Flying Blue award search tool. It’s not the best, but you can get a calendar view and almost all Skyteam carriers are covered. While I don’t always recommend actually redeeming via Flying Blue, the award search tool is free and can get you where you need to go. Sooner or later I will tackle delta.com, which, yikes… Until then!

Index

Part IV: Using Wikipedia to Determine Alliance Partners

Part V: Using united.com to Search for Star Alliance Award Space

Part VI: Using ANA to Search for Star Alliance Space

Part VII: Searching for Award Space Segment by Segment

Part VIII: Searching for Oneworld Award Space on aa.com

Part IX: Searching for Oneworld Award Space on ba.com

Part X: Using Wikipedia to Determine Airline Routes

Part XI: Searching Skyteam Award Space using Air France/KLM’s Flying Blue Website

Part XII: Tips for Booking an Award Ticket on delta.com

Part XIII: Booking an Award Ticket on delta.com (Advanced Techniques)

Aug 08 2014

The DIY Guide to Booking Award Tickets – Part X: Using Wikipedia to Determine Airline Routes

Did you know DPS Airport in Bali was a hub for Garuda? I certainly didn't but Wikipedia did — Did you know DPS Airport in Bali was a hub for Garuda? I certainly didn’t but Wikipedia did

I realized while starting another post that I missed one of the key skills necessary for booking your own awards. It’s a pretty simple concept and one many of you are likely familiar with so hopefully this one won’t be too long. Whenever you are booking awards and hopefully searching segment by segment, the challenge lies in answering this simple question: “Who flies where?”

Being able to answer that question gives an award booker a lot of power and flexibility to create great itineraries. Luckily, it’s a lot easier to figure that out when you think. You just need to return to our old friend, Wikipedia. Here’s a simple guide for how to figure out which airlines fly between which airports.

1. Search Wikipedia for the airport you are looking for

Let’s say you want to fly somewhere relatively difficult, like Bali. A simple google search should help you find this Wikipedia page for Bali’s airport (DPS).

2. Click “airlines and destinations” (or whatever looks most like that) to get a full list of the airlines that fly to that airport

Clicking airlines and destination will not only get you a list of airlines that fly to DPS, but it will also get you a list of the airports that these airlines fly to as well. Suddenly you know all the airports that fly into Bali and you know which airlines are just absolutely not an option.

Why look at all those airlines and destinations! (click to enlarge)

3. Double check the list of airlines with the list of alliance partners to determine whether you can book the tickets

Bali is a good example because there are a bunch of airlines that fly there that aren’t part of the three major alliances. So you have to search the list and know which airlines are partners of Star Alliance, Oneworld, or Skyteam (if you are using those miles to book).

That’s it! Honestly, learning to do this quickly and efficiently is one of the most important things you can do if you want to book your own awards. Once you get comfortable with this, you can start building your itineraries backwards segment by segment. For example, the Bali airport’s Wikipedia page tells me Cathay Pacific flies to Hong Kong. I then search Hong Kong’s airport and see Cathay flies to Chicago. Now I know a possible itinerary I can be looking for to get from the US to Bali – Chicago to Hong Kong to Bali on Cathay. This really helps you come up with ideas as you search for your award segment by segment. For the record, I find it as useful on domestic tickets as I do international.

Wikipedia will help you confirm this is a possible route you could take to Bali

Final Thoughts

Searching Wikipedia for airline destinations and routes is a simple but powerful tool that will help you a lot as you book your own awards. Know who flies where – that way you know where to search to get to where you want to go. Remember, when booking award tickets, the straightest path isn’t always a line – using Wikipedia to determine airline routes can be the difference between taking a slight detour or just staying home altogether.

Index

Part IV: Using Wikipedia to Determine Alliance Partners

Part V: Using united.com to Search for Star Alliance Award Space

Part VI: Using ANA to Search for Star Alliance Space

Part VII: Searching for Award Space Segment by Segment

Part VIII: Searching for Oneworld Award Space on aa.com

Part IX: Searching for Oneworld Award Space on ba.com

Part X: Using Wikipedia to Determine Airline Routes

Part XI: Searching Skyteam Award Space using Air France/KLM’s Flying Blue Website

Part XII: Tips for Booking an Award Ticket on delta.com

Part XIII: Booking an Award Ticket on delta.com (Advanced Techniques)

Aug 01 2014

The DIY Guide to Booking Award Tickets – Part IX: Searching for Oneworld Award Space on ba.com

If you want to search for this award seat you can't use aa.com — If you want to search for this award seat you can’t use aa.com

In my last entry in this series I talked about how to search for Oneworld award space on aa.com. Unfortunately, the American Airlines website doesn’t show all of its partners’ award space. I use ba.com for any searches not involving American, Air Berlin, British Airways, Finnair, Qantas, Royal Jordanian, or US Airways. The aa.com search engine is superior, so if you’re looking for British Airways space it’s actually better to look there. One of the quirks of award booking.

Searching for Oneworld award space on ba.com is pretty straightforward, it’s just clunky. For starters, you need a British Airways account so if you don’t have one sign up here. After logging in, you want to navigate the menus from Executive Club => Spending Avios => Book Flights with Avios.

After that, input your origin and destination, and search! Personally, I almost always restrict my searches to one ways to make things easier for myself. If the engine asks you whether you want to book a stopover just say no.

I like to search one ways only to keep my options open (click to enlarge)

The results you get are annoying because you have to click every time you want to look for space on a different day, but at the very least they are pretty accurate.

You have to click each day individually. On the plus side, if you live in San Francisco and feel like going to Hong Kong next week... (click to enlarge) — You have to click each day individually. On the plus side, if you live in San Francisco and feel like going to Hong Kong next week… (click to enlarge)

I’m sure I’m not blowing anyone’s mind for how to search for award space here, but here are some things I’ve learned that you may or may not know – I find them pretty useful.

1. I almost always search for one adult ONLY

Why? If you take a look at the image above, that was a search for one adult. British Airways has a nice feature of telling you exactly how many seats are still available – even if there are more than you asked for. But if I had searched for three seats in this particular search, it would have just come up “Not Available”.

Obviously this is useless if you are searching for three people, but say you wanted to fly a family of four and didn’t mind splitting into First and Business. If you see 2 seats available in each class, you know you can fly your family – something you wouldn’t have known if you had searched for four people. It’d be even easier than solving the Wolf and Ferry puzzle!

2. You rarely see itineraries longer than two legs

You may have been wondering why I always search one ways. The reality is British Airways rarely (if ever, I can’t remember an instance) displays itineraries longer than two legs. But three leg itineraries are legal in almost every circumstance so you’re losing out if you just limit yourself to what British Airways shows you.

British Airways doesn't show any space from LAX to Rome — British Airways doesn’t show any space from LAX to Rome (click to enlarge)

British Airways also will often not show you mixed cabin itineraries – so if you have a transatlantic leg in business and can connect to a short one hour intra Europe leg in economy you won’t see it on British Airways’ website.

Searching for your award segment by segment using one way searches solves this problem. It makes an already tedious search engine even more difficult but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. If you don’t have the time to search yourself you can always hire someone to do it for you (or me!).

3. It’s generally best to search for first class

When you search for first class, the British Airways website will generally show you availability in all classes below that. So I start my searches with first class. Of course, this backfires sometimes, for some reason there are times when the website won’t show economy as available when it actually is if you start by searching for first. So if I’m searching specifically for economy I’ll just search for that. Like I said, the British Airways website isn’t ideal – but I find searching for first class limits headaches more often than not in my personal searches.

4. When changing dates, the calendar is wonky

If you’ve started a search and want to change dates, when you click on the pop up calendar, the date will type in as the European system instead of the American one (i.e., DD/MM/YY). This will cause the British Airways website to search for space on the wrong date or more often than not, a date that doesn’t exist. To circumvent this I just type in the date myself. It’s just a little thing that can save you some time if you’re using the website heavily for searches.

If you look closely you'll see the mistake the calendar makes (click to enlarge) — If you look closely you’ll see the mistake the calendar makes (click to enlarge)

Final Thoughts

Hopefully this post has helped make the British Airways award search tool a little less painful. Remember, I’d recommend only using the website for partners American doesn’t cover. No need to bang your head against a wall when AA has a perfectly good search engine – if they picked up all Oneworld carriers I’d just say goodbye to ba.com forever. I’ll update this with any more tips I think of if necessary. In the meantime, happy booking and as always feel free to shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment if you have a question, I’m happy to help! And remember, just because you’re searching for award space on ba.com doesn’t mean you need to book it there.

Index