italdesign
Level 2 Member
Skycurrency can be great for international IF you live in a hub. Otherwise you're likely looking at a sharp increase in miles required for a trip, since as you say domestic saver Y is abysmal. Also, IIRC there are hundreds of $$ in YQ if flying their Chinese partners.Delta's partnerships make for good business class availability (and at saver rates) to the UK (via Virgin Atlantic) and China (via China Airlines or China Eastern), for a couple of examples I've recently been searching. It really depends where you're going, and whether other Skyteam/partner carriers with decent availability fly there, because Delta's own availability is questionable at best and they're usually charging a ridiculous number of points. Although I have actually seen a fair number of saver-level flights to London on Delta metal... They may not have availability where you're looking to go, which makes them not good for you, but there are still some gems in their award chart and availability, especially as you find yourself more and more limited on what cards you can apply for.