Travel Planning Archives - Page 7 of 9

Oct 17 2014

Taking Advantage of Low Cash Fares

Earlier this week, the flying community was in a bit of a tizzy about some cheap(ish) cash fares from the US to Europe. I actually booked a RT flight for the three of us to Ireland at 2 AM the night it broke, but ended up cancelling under the 24 hour policy. I recognize that paying cash for coach might not interest many people, but I wanted to go through my thought process and offer some tips on to how to stay abreast of such things.

Getting News of Low Fares

These days, Twitter is where the party is at. If you are looking for low cash fares, I’d recommend following sites like The Flight Deal (@TheFlightDeal) and airfarewatchdog (@airfarewatchdog) on Twitter. I RSS The Flight Deal as well, but the reality is RSS isn’t always fast enough, especially when you have less than an hour to make your decision. These sites and others are posting deals all the time – but go into overdrive when something is particularly hot. They’ll even post screenshots of sample itineraries for those who enjoy being spoonfed.

Deciding whether a cash fare is “worth” it

I recognize people get into the miles and points game for a lot of reasons. Personally, I love visiting new places. I earn miles and points for two reasons: 1) to save money and 2) to get there in more comfort whenever possible. The reality is, a lot of times 1&2 align.

For me, a cash fare is worth it when I feel like I can get a good deal to get to a place that I want to visit during a time that I would be vacationing anyway. I’m not sitting on a huge surplus of miles so if the deal is good enough, cash makes sense. My general criteria for a “good” deal are < $225 domestically (coast to coast type flights), < $600 to Europe, and < $850 to Asia. If I see fares at those prices, I would consider buying them for times I was planning on going on vacation anyway.

I used all the money I saved on our flight to Madrid in 2011 on Patatas Bravas

I figure I can leverage my points to save on hotels and other miscellaneous expenses and still stay within a budget I’m comfortable with. I have the luxury to do this because we’re not cash strapped – we have a vacation budget. Since I’ve started using more miles and points, the surplus in that budget has just been invested or saved, but I’m not going to lose sleep if we use that up in a given year. I’m not a huge retire early/financial independence guy (not right now at least) so I’m willing to give up some of those savings for the travel experience.

There are times when fares drop so low that I would consider booking a trip even when I wasn’t going to vacation anyway. This generally puts me at risk of spending more than planned on travel – so it has to be an amazing deal for me to go for it. The rough criteria for me for these “book it anyway” flights are < $150 domestically, < $400 to Europe, and < $600 to Asia. An example of this is the time US Airways had a $325 RT cash ticket to Europe – we booked that within thirty minutes and went to Madrid for a long weekend.

The best way to search for and recreate the low fares

For this particular deal, I found roundtrip flights to Dublin for $550 per person. Since Little M is about to be over two, I had to buy her ticket as well. I thought this was a good enough deal to pull the trigger without asking my wife – I just had to find flights.

The cheapest flight was over $300 cheaper a few days ago!

What’s the best way to find flights at times like these? Personally, I use Kayak when I’m in a rush. I actually prefer ITA Matrix as a search engine, but it’s major drawback is that you can’t get redirected from ITA Matrix directly to a place where you can book. Kayak does offer that, and nine times out of ten finds the same flights, so I prefer Kayak during “book before the deal dies!” situations. It also processes a little faster on my computer which is useful when you are trying to do like ten searches a minute.

So I threw in some of the city pairs that I had seen on Twitter and found a $550 fare I like. At that point, I just bought it! My plan was to utilize United’s 24 hour cancellation policy (I booked directly from united.com) in the event Jess didn’t want to go.

Would have loved to go back - maybe next time — Would have loved to go back – maybe next time

Book first, cancel later

All the major airlines have 24 hour cancellation policies which are very useful at times like these. Driving to work the next morning, I brought the idea up to Jess about going back to Ireland. By mid afternoon, we had nixed it – we wanted to explore elsewhere. Cancelling the flight was simple; I just loaded up the reservation on united.com and cancelled it, choosing to have the purchase refunded to the original form of payment.

I did run into something interesting for a similar AA fare. I actually found a fare on aa.com for about $450. However, American is a little different – they allow 24 hour holds but don’t have 24 hour cancellations (as far as I can tell, I looked but couldn’t find anything in writing). The problem is, American wouldn’t allow 24 hour holds on the itineraries I found – I think because some flights were coded as US Airways metal (and not codeshares). I couldn’t figure out whether I’d get a 24 hour cancellation or not so decided not to risk it.

American's 24-hour hold applies to AA coded flights ONLY — American’s 24-hour hold applies to AA coded flights ONLY

Final Thoughts – Summing it All Up

To sum it all up, here are the steps I take to take advantage of low cash fares. If saving money is your only goal, this is probably not the best use of it. But for people like me who just want to travel for less, it can be a valuable part of your arsenal.

1 – Determine your thresholds for “good” fares

2 – Follow websites like The Flight Deal and airfarewatchdog to stay abreast of what’s out there

3 – If a deal strikes, make a quick decision – book first, and cancel later if you have to

4 – MAKE SURE you have an “out” – if an itinerary you want doesn’t have a 24 hour cancellation policy or equivalent – be 110% sure you want to fly that flight.

Hope this helps some of the beginners out there – remember points aren’t the only way to get places. Happy travels!

Sep 26 2014

Sometimes it Pays to be Obsessive Part II: Staying in First Class after a Forced Downgrade

I was at a dinner the other night when a friend (and very good food blogger, coincidentally), told the group – “Oh Joe, he’s obsessed with miles and points.” At first I was like, woah, that’s kind of a strong statement – but – guilty. I’ve mentioned before how my semi-obsessive checking of award space has paid off in the past. I wanted to share my experience after a forced downgrade.

Our original itinerary had us going to Philadelphia first (gcmap.com)

I booked two round trip first class tickets on British Airways using US Airways miles back when they still weren’t charging fuel surcharges. Our routing was BOS-PHL-LHR-LYS on the outbound, and LYS-LHR-BOS on the return. Both transatlantic segments were in first class and we were super excited to take the trip.

Unfortunately, as these things go, I received a troubling e-mail from Award Wallet a month or two later.

Award Wallet alerted me to this unwelcome change

I called both British and US Airways – it turns out BA switched equipment and the PHL-LHR would no longer have first class. This kind of sucked because this equipment change was ONLY for our day of travel and we were pretty much locked in date wise due to childcare issues.

There were no alternative flights in first at the time, so I did what you should do when these kinds of things happen – I did not accept the change. Instead, I just left it as is and decided to wait and see if first class transatlantic (TATL) space would open up later. My one worry was that if I switched flights back into a first class cabin, US Airways would try to charge me the exorbitant taxes and fees (definitely over $500 maybe up to $1000 per person).

British Airways business class is still lie flat, but we paid for first and would prefer that

I was assured by a friendly agent that US Airways would do an even exchange (no extra money on my part). I took her name down in case I needed it, because the reality is many US Airways agents apply the rules differently. Booking awards with US Airways is a bit like the Wild Wild West, which can be a good thing (getting them to book a routing that is technically illegal because they don’t understand geography), or a bad thing (being forced to submit to a rule that doesn’t make common sense).

So, after not accepting the change, I, um, obsessively checked award space from Boston to London almost every single day for the next three months. So, yes, Jen, I guess I am obsessive. My reasoning? There are two flight from Boston to London every night, and I checked and saw a bunch of empty seats on Expertflyer.

When that many seats are open there's always a decent chance award space will open up — When that many seats are open there’s always a decent chance award space will open up

The odds that British Airways would open two of those seats were decent. My plan was to switch onto those flights (or really any TATL flights in BA F that opened up) if possible, or in a worst case scenario just suck it up and fly in business.

Well, yesterday was the day – I logged in at around 130 PM and lo and behold there were two seats on the direct BOS-LHR flight. I couldn’t call US Airways until 230 so I had to sweat out that hour – I’ve seen award space go bye bye in that time before. But being so busy lately, I needed to prioritize the more important things in life first.

As soon as 230 hit, I called up US Airways. I explained to the very helpful agent what was going on and she put me on hold to see if she could switch me to the new flights. My heart skipped a beat when she said “You realize you might have to pay taxes and fees on this new flight now and they can be pretty high on British Airways.” <deep breath> I calmly and confidently replied, “I was told when I had called before that it would be an even exchange since the downgrade was forced on us – could you please see if that’s still possible?”

Lyon - here we come in F! — Lyon – here we come in F!

She said she would check on it and put me on hold. I hadn’t even whipped out the previous agent’s name yet. I was on hold for 15 minutes – I actually thought that since I was on hold for a long time she was probably doing the even exchange (otherwise she’d have come back asking for my CC information or whatever). Indeed, she came back on, thanked me for waiting, and told me she had taken care of everything. Woohoo!

So now we not only have reinstated our seats in first class without having to pay anything (not that I thought we should have, it was gonna be a real dilemma if they had tried to make us to and I didn’t have time to hang up and call again), but we have one less segment and can leave directly from home!

Final Thoughts

I share this anecdote to reiterate that in this game, it really does pay off to be obsessive sometimes. Jess and I don’t get to travel as much anymore now that Little M is around – so when we do I want to aspire to as high a level as possible. Right now we can still do that and it’s important to me to take advantage of the opportunities while they are still there. Never underestimate the importance of “gardening” your reservations.

Sep 16 2014

How to Plan Travel for Summer 2015 – Part 1

I try to avoid Asia in the summer - this picture doesn't indicate how ridiculously hot Hong Kong is — I try to avoid Asia in the summer – this picture doesn’t indicate how ridiculously hot Hong Kong is

It’s the time of the year to start planning our summer travels. Actually, you could say it’s even a little late for that, depending on your definition of summer. We usually travel in July so we’re a bit behind. Remember, most airlines open their schedules up 330 days in advance, so I can book travel up through August 11th right now on most programs. This post will outline my thought process for booking travel and hopefully give you some ideas for how you want to use your hard earned miles next summer! If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you’re likely not ready to book yet…get crackin!

Question 0: Cash or Miles?

If the answer to Question 0 is cash, you can pretty much skip the rest of this post. Right now is NOT the best time to buy cash tickets – prices will definitely drop some time in the next eleven months. If you don’t have enough miles to book that summer trip right now, you can build up those balances – chances are more than decent that space will open up closer in.

Question 1: When can you travel?

I find for most people this is the biggest determinant. Summer is usually a little better because people are more free to leave on Tuesdays and random things like that. Obviously, the more flexible you can be the better. Since award space is a function of airlines trying to fill every last seat, you’ll see the most availability on low travel days – Tuesdays and Saturdays for example.

The weather's a lot cooler in Peru — The weather’s a lot cooler in Peru

If you don’t have the flexibility and need to leave on weekends, it’s imperative that you make decisions sooner rather than later (or wait until the last minute next year, but then this article isn’t for you). Airlines are releasing less and less award space 330 days out, so you should try to be ready to go once your desired dates hit the 330 mark.

For us, we’re pretty flexible, if we can find anything for a 2 week trip in July we should be good to go. It’s Question 2 that is a bigger source of stress for us.

Question 2: How many in your party?

Oh, to return to the days when we were only looking for two seats. Little M will be two next year so she’ll no longer be flying on our laps in first. The added mileage cost plus the relative difficulty of finding three seats in first means we’ll probably be flying business next year – that’s if we’re lucky. It isn’t too hard to find 3 coach seats this far out, but a lot of airlines will only release two business class seats.

Another option we (and your family) could consider is splitting up the family by cabin. For example, a family of four could snag two seats in business and two in coach relatively easily and just switch off on the outbound and return (or however they like). Or if you’re particularly brave, one in business and three in coach. Of course that depends on the age of the children.

A third option for families with older children is splitting up the itinerary altogether – parent + child 1 on Flight 1 and parent + child 2 on Flight 2. I don’t really prefer this option because it’s a lot of moving parts (and we’re not there yet size/age wise), but it definitely makes finding award space a lot easier!

Question 3: What programs do you have miles in?

Obviously this question is going to go a long way to dictate where you will be going. If you have a ton of SPG points, the world is pretty much your oyster since you can transfer to programs in every major alliance. If you are rich in Ultimate Rewards, you are likely flying Southwest or United, etc. etc.

If you have a ton of miles in a specific program, then you’re locked into booking flights with that airline and its partners. Hopefully you have a large portfolio with decent balances spread across different programs, this will maximize the options available to you.

Lufthansa first class is probably too expensive these days - too bad — Lufthansa first class is probably too expensive these days – too bad

In our case, we have a ton of AA/US miles and a bunch of Membership Rewards and Delta Skymiles, so we are pretty limited. All our other balances are in recovery – we are slowly working to build them back to levels where we can use them to book for everyone. I find that it goes in cycles – you burn all your points in one program and then rely on other programs while you slowly rebuild your balance in the first. It’s like leaving a field fallow for a year so you can grow better crops the next year…or something.

Question 4: Where do you want to go – domestic or international?

In my thinking, where to go is the fourth thing I ask myself. The benefit of miles is you can get places in comfort while saving a lot of money – the drawback is if you’re dead set on a certain location you might find yourself out of luck. Miles are best used when you are flexible.

I always start by considering whether I want the family to go domestic or international. This is a question I am personally struggling with right now. In a lot of ways, going domestic is easier – shorter flights, less miles, etc., but going international is what I love to do. Depending on your answer to this question, you’ll start zeroing in more on what miles you should be using.

If you want to go domestic, the best value can be found in distance based sweet spots. KennyBSAT has an amazing primer (with routes) on these sweet spots, so check them out and see if you fall into any of them. If I can’t find a distance based sweet spot, I personally would rather pay cash and fly coach and save my miles for an international trip in a premium cabin.

The reason why I’m struggling this year is because the cost of international travel (in business) is a lot more now that we have to pay for our daughter – and who knows what she’ll be like as a 2.5 year old. I’m still leaning international though…

Question 5: What continent/state do you want to visit?

Once you’ve decided international or domestic, you kind of need to zero in on a certain region. With domestic it’s a little easier, you can just start your search by looking for award space on sweet spot routes from your hometown.

You don't get castles like this in the States — You don’t get castles like this in the States

For international, the continents you can travel to are going to be limited by your miles balances and the cost of travel. Since we have so many US/AA miles, our family can technically travel to any continent next year. Still, if we go abroad, we’ll probably stick to Europe due to the shorter flights (and the extreme heat in Asia). We’re not going to take Little M on a safari while she’s still prey sized and we’d want to do that if we went to Africa so we eliminated that.

Question 6: Where’s the availability?

Searching for availability is a post in and of itself, so I’ll hit on that next time. In the meanwhile, you might get lucky with the AA space KennyBSAT pointed out last week – I know I have a flight on hold!

Final Thoughts

If you want to travel on miles, start booking now! Hopefully seeing my thought process helps you crystallize yours – burn those miles and enjoy!

Aug 18 2014

The DIY Guide to Booking Award Tickets – Part XIII: Booking an Award Ticket on delta.com (Advanced Techniques)

You don't have to restrict your trip to just London using Skymiles — You don’t have to restrict your trip to just London using Skymiles

People have different opinions when it comes to booking award tickets with frequent flyer miles. I, for one, love booking award tickets and enjoy the challenge that comes with doing so. Booking award tickets are like puzzles to me and I love solving them. Other people hate booking award tickets, consider them too much of a hassle, or even go so far as to believing their frequent flyer miles are completely worthless. I’ve decided to put a guide together for those of you who fall in between – people who want to book award tickets themselves but feel like they need some pointers. This guide will assume some basic knowledge, namely, that you know how to log in to your frequent flyer account and check your mileage balance. Other than that, the guide is here to help you through the process – hope you find it useful! Feel free to refer to the index at the bottom of the page for other entries.

In my last post I shared some tips I’ve learned over the years about booking flights on delta.com. Today we’ll look at a few techniques that can really help you stretch the value of your Delta Skymiles. This “advanced techniques” post assumes you are comfortable with the strategies outlined in the past post and will just focus on the cold, hard results. Delta’s Skymiles program has a pretty generous policy when it comes to stopovers and open jaws. That’s right, Delta is generous. Wow.

We haven’t covered this yet although I’ve covered it elsewhere – a stopover is generally defined as a stop in a connecting city for longer than 24 hours. An open jaw is when you depart from an airport other than the one you landed in, when you return to a different airport from where you started, or both! Here are some simple examples:

Stopover: A => B (hang out for longer than 24 hours) => C => A. You fly through B to get to your final destination, C, but hang out there for awhile before continuing your journey.

Open jaw: A => B // C => A. For this open jaw, you’d find your own way from B to C (train, drive, whatever), but fly back home to A from C. It’s actually easier to visualize open jaws using maps.

This is an "open jaw" (fly into LHR, fly out of CDG) [gcmap.com] — This is an “open jaw” (fly into LHR, fly out of CDG) [gcmap.com]

Another open jaw - you fly out of Boston, but ultimately return to ATL [gcmap.com] — Another open jaw – you fly out of Boston, but ultimately return to ATL [gcmap.com]

Here are some ideas for how you can extend your trip, and thus the value of your Skymiles, by utilizing Delta’s allowed open jaw and stopover.

Extension 1: Visit more places in Europe

This is probably my preferred extension. Remember Delta allows both an open jaw and a stopover. This gives you the opportunity to visit 3 cities for (almost) the price of one. How? Well, in the example in my previous post I just did a simple trip to London (which of course wasn’t simple thanks to delta.com). But let’s say you wanted to go to Paris – you could stopover in London along the way. Suddenly you’ve increased the number of destinations you’re hitting from one to two.

You can stopover on any city on the way to your destination as long as it’s a legal routing. How do you know a routing is legal? If you can have a layover in a city on the way to your destination according to delta.com, you can have a stopover there. I took the liberty of doing a bunch of segment by segment searches – London is indeed a city you can connect through to get to Paris. Thus, it would be legal on Delta to fly from Boston to London, stopover, and then continue on to Paris before returning to Boston. The great thing is, this costs the same as the Boston to London round trip ticket.

A legal itinerary on a Delta award ticket [gcmap.com]

But why stop there? Remember, Delta allows a stopover and an open jaw. That means you can hit a third city and still not pay any more miles. The only caveat here is you’d have to find a way to get to the third city on your own, but there are plenty of ways to do that (plane, train, car, boat, whatever). What this means is I could fly back to Boston from Amsterdam and it would still be the same price. That’s right, I could do London, Paris, and Amsterdam, all for the same cost in miles plus whatever it costs me to get to Amsterdam (hitchhike?)

It is no less annoying to search for and book this award ticket on delta.com than it was to book the Boston to London round trip. BUT – it’s also no MORE annoying. You use the same exact techniques; search segment by segment, fly economy on short haul if you have to, and then string everything together using a multi-city award search. I don’t normally link to the same post three times but seriously, if you need a refresher: here. I went through all the steps and you can see my results below (I built it the same way I did the last itinerary, business on the outbound and economy return). As you can see, it’s the same number of miles and just a shade more in taxes and fees.

Original itinerary, 92,500 miles per person and (click to enlarge) — Original itinerary, 92,500 miles and $214 per person and (click to enlarge)

Adding Paris and Amsterdam still costs 92,500 miles and just $4 more (click to enlarge)

This is what I would call a great value. It’s also the kind of thing you usually can’t pull off with cash tickets. You can spread the flights out over the course of a year if you’d like – hey, take a year off and go explore Europe! Backpacking from Paris to Amsterdam could be fun! The fact that you have a year to complete your itinerary plays into the second extension you could make to the original trip.

Extension 2: The “free” one-way

Free one-ways are misnamed a bit. They’re not really free – you give up the chance to hit multiple cities in Europe. But what you gain is the ability to take care of half the flights of your next (usually domestic) vacation. The concept of the free one-way is relatively simple: You take your regular round trip award flight, but you tack on one more flight before or after that round trip award. So you are either tacking on a return flight from somewhere to your hometown before the main trip or tacking on an outbound flight from your hometown to somewhere you want to go after the main trip.

We added a "free" one-way to our Europe trip (in blue) [gcmap.com] — We added a “free” one-way to our Europe trip (in blue) [gcmap.com]

I’ll use an example from my own experience. As you know, we just got back from Germany and Austria. Well, in a couple weeks, as part of that same award ticket, Jess and I are flying from Boston to Los Angeles for a wedding. We essentially knocked out half the flight cost on a trip we were going to take anyway. That’s why people call these “free” one-ways.

Example of a "free" one-way, adding a flight to Atlanta after the main trip [gcmap.com] — Example of a “free” one-way, adding a flight to Atlanta after the main trip [gcmap.com]

How does it work, technically? Well it only works smoothly in programs where you are allowed an open jaw AND a stopover (in other programs you can get it done, but with complications). Delta is one such program. Here is the example I did for this post: BOS-LHR-BOS-ATL. I took the same round trip from the original itinerary to and from London. However, a week later, I searched for a one way flight to Atlanta. Then, using the multi-city search, I tacked it onto the original itinerary (by starting from scratch). It came out, once again, to the same price in miles and a little more in taxes and fees. That’s because you technically use your stopover in Boston and then use your open jaw to end somewhere different than where you began. Tricksy.

Again, only $6 more expensive - cheaper than any cash flight you'd ever pay — Again, only $6 more expensive – cheaper than any cash flight you’d ever pay

So, you can go to London and back, and then later, take that trip to the Coca Cola factory you’ve been dreaming of (or go visit your in-laws, or whatever you need to do in Atlanta). There are some combinations of cities and destinations for which this doesn’t work, but in general, if the routing seems to make sense (aka you’re going in generally the same direction), Delta will allow it. It takes work, you need to search segment by segment again, but hey – you generally don’t need to talk to a phone agent. So if you don’t want to gallivant around Europe (or don’t have the time), but know you need to get somewhere else in the USA within a year – try to tack on the flight!

Final Thoughts

Hopefully this post gives you some ideas about how to stretch the value of your Delta Skymiles even further. Some creativity can yield some pretty big dividends. Plus, I saved the best for last – all these tricks work for domestic award itineraries on Delta as well (unlike every other program I know of). That really increases the value of domestic award redemption on Delta, even in premium cabins (which usually are a bad deal domestically). Take my word for it – play around with Delta’s award booking system and get used to it – there are gems to be had.

Index

Part I: Know Why Award Tickets Exist

Part II: Know Your Award Types and Charts

Part III: Know Your Airline Alliances and Partners

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 I: Know Why Award Tickets Exist

Part II: Know Your Award Types and Charts

Part III: Know Your Airline Alliances and Partners

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