Back in September, there was a period of a few weeks where Delta SkyMiles members cheap tickets to paris didn t have access to any Air France/KLM transatlantic business class award space, as discussed here . Historically Air France is Delta s most generous partner when it comes to releasing award space. cheap tickets to paris So while their product wasn t great, it was an easy way to get low level transatlantic award space, something which is virtually impossible on Delta metal in the high season.
I ve received several requests for a follow up post on the situation, so let s get to it. Well, Air France/KLM are back to releasing transatlantic award space to SkyMiles cheap tickets to paris members, though the issue is that it s only a subset of what they release to their own members.
Great, so if you re a Flying Blue member you could book that seat. And ExpertFlyer confirms that, as they also show two business class award seats on that flight, so it s worth noting that they re pulling availability from Air France Flying Blue and not Delta SkyMiles.
But that s just a really mild example, where Delta doesn t have access to two seats. Take a look at Air France availability cheap tickets to paris between Washington and Paris for September 30, 2013. There are at least nine business class award seats per flight.
So I guess the new system is that Delta only gets access to a small percentage of Air France Flying Blue availability. In theory cheap tickets to paris I don t have a problem with an airline releasing cheap tickets to paris only a portion of their award space to partner airlines, though there s no doubt that this is a drastic change.
This is a huge blow to the value of SkyMiles for travel to Europe. On the plus side Australia and Asia are looking up. To Asia you have China Southern and their Airbus 380 (and their menu is tough to beat ), on which they release a lot of award space . Then Korean Air award space also recently started displaying on delta.com , which is a huge improvement given that there was no place to previously search that award space.
To Australia, Delta stopped collecting fuel surcharges for travel on Virgin Australia a few months ago, and you can also redeem SkyMiles for travel on China Southern or Korean Air to Australia via Asia .
As far as alternatives to Europe go given the Air France/KLM issue, keep in mind that American Express Membership Rewards points can also be transfered to Air France Flying Blue if you really want to travel on Air France. Redemption rates are mostly cheap tickets to paris the same, though you ll pay an extra $600-800 per passenger in fuel surcharges.
Delta s other best partner for travel to Europe is Alitalia. They have a fully flat business class product on much of their longhaul fleet so are a great option. Just keep in mind award space for them doesn t show up on delta.com, so the best place to search is ExpertFlyer.
Smiles the frequent flyer program from GOL Linhas Aereas here in Brazil is also a partner of AirFrance-KLM. And the availability that I can see on ExpertFlyer is not available through the Smiles website anymore. Before it was, but now is gone. Duuno why.
@ Nick I actually think this is Air France s doing and not Delta s. As Fabio points out above, they re doing the same thing with other partner programs, so sadly I don t think we can blame Delta for this one.
I spent at least two weeks trying multiple ways, any summer 2013 timing, any US hub for any European destination. That experience was a major part in my decision to use-up and give up on Delta. We do finally have low tier award Business class tickets booked mid-June return cheap tickets to paris mid-July. The trans Atlantic legs are not on AF, although the connecting and stop over flights in Europe are on AF. Still easy AF connections within Europe.
Yeah, I was asked to help a friend do searches for a 100K flight recently cheap tickets to paris and my observations matched yours. I finally gave him the bad news that it just wasn t gonna happen for him for that price in Skymiles. I try to always advise people to plan to earn more miles than they think it will take but who listens?
Lucky, you re showing different dates for EF and DL on the last example. I see availability for multiple seats on both the 29th and 30th via skymiles currently as well, and was able to see all 9 seats on both flights on the 29th.
@Heather @ passthedressing: Yes, you must book by phone. Alitalia seats tend to require long sells. Delta does not collect surcharges for Alitalia flights on award tickets originating outside Europe and the Middle East.
I ll echo what others have said: the EF inventory matches what DL can see, and lucky wrote a really sloppily-researched post here. There is extra inventory showing on FlyingBlue cheap tickets to paris that cannot be booked through Delta, but so far ExpertFlyer matches.
There is a big problem with KLM inventory showing as available on delta.com but coming back with a Just sold out error when trying to ticket. Many people have called in and tried to ticket these seats, but the agents keep getting sell denied errors when trying to book.
I looked cheap tickets to paris at different dates that you posted above, and in the advanced search click nonstop flights, I show plenty of 100,000 mile availability plus tax for round trip C. I used the same (and different) dates from your example above and it gives me AF flights.
So is it possible that because of the TATL JV with revenue-sharing elements, DL wants more AF-KL members to redeem AF-KL miles for TATL award tickets? Can t forget those fuel surcharges that AF-KL collects. How much of it do they share with DL on TATL itineraries?
cheap tickets to paris Now delta is back to charging a hefty fuel charge to flights on delta metal from Europe to states around $600.00 ,I booked A ticket 6 weeks ago and fuel charge was under $100 last year fuel charge was around $300 think we all agree Delta is no friend of F.F.
Just as dwh says they are indeed there, you can either use to only show non-stop flight or that you already on the search page chose to only search for non-stop flights. Either way they are both there
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