Odds of getting a frequent flyer award ticket

[regatta333 Member Find all posts View Profile Close regatta333]

We have had good success in being able to book first class fares to Europe (Portugal and Germany) use Delta miles, but the lowest fares were available only through Air France and involved booking through an agent. In both cases, however, we had to compromise our first choice on dates in one of the directions.

Last year, I signed up for the British Air Visa when they were offering the 100K mile promotion. I am now at a point were I am in a position to redeem the miles, with a free companion ticket, but am finding the tickets involve taxes of $450 per person. This compares to $150-160 that I had to pay for the Delta redemptions. With the taxes that high, I am re-evaluating whether I want to keep the card ($75 annual fee and you earn a free companion ticket each year you charge at least $30K).

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

What season were your DL TATL tickets? If you scored high season DL TATL tickets at low miles, then you really accomplished something. If it was low or shoulder season, however, that is a different matter.

The problem with BA and many other European carriers is that what they call ''tax'' is not really all truly tax. Within it is a fee with the code YQ, which is a fuel surcharge that they pay to themselves. Dishonest? Heck, yeah! But they get away with it so far. Several European airlines have recently had the integrity to drop that scam on award redemptions. SAS and LOT are two that have done so. YQ is often over half of the so-called ''tax'' on carriers like BA.

One danger coming up is that AA and BA are now in the process of harmonizing their ff programs. If AA surrenders to BA's bad practices like the YQ ripoff and failing to award full miles on all published fares, then it will be a huge devaluation of the AAdvantage program.

I saw the info on that BA credit card, too, but had no interest due to the YQ scam.

We have had good success in being able to book first class fares to Europe (Portugal and Germany) use Delta miles, but the lowest fares were available only through Air France and involved booking through an agent. In both cases, however, we had to compromise our first choice on dates in one of the directions.

Last year, I signed up for the British Air Visa when they were offering the 100K mile promotion. I am now at a point were I am in a position to redeem the miles, with a free companion ticket, but am finding the tickets involve taxes of $450 per person. This compares to $150-160 that I had to pay for the Delta redemptions. With the taxes that high, I am re-evaluating whether I want to keep the card ($75 annual fee and you earn a free companion ticket each year you charge at least $30K).

[regatta333 Member Find all posts View Profile Close regatta333]

What season were your DL TATL tickets? If you scored high season DL TATL tickets at low miles, then you really accomplished something. If it was low or shoulder season, however, that is a different matter.

Both tickets were for May travel; we try to avoid travelling in the summer months.

Thanks for the explanation about the fuel surcharge. For the 100K promotion and the free companion fare, it will still be worthwhile since we'll be using it for business class tickets, but with the fuel surcharge and the fact that they have 3 different tiers for European business class travel, going from 100-130K, I will be cancelling the card after the first year is up.

[x3skier Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close x3skier]

Hint for shoulder season travel: AA reduces the miles required in shoulder and off season for TATL travel. Coach TATL tickets are 40K instead of the 60K in high season.

Never even consider Coach TATL or paying for them in any class at any time. I also avoid Europe in the Summer.

Cheers

[grest Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close grest]

Carolinian, what do you mean by "hide the available seats"? Are there seats out there that we cannot see online?

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

Carolinian, what do you mean by "hide the available seats"? Are there seats out there that we cannot see online?

DL's online calendar has been broken since about the time of the NW takeover. If you want a DL ticket, you need to call them, even though there is an extra fee for that.

[x3skier Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close x3skier]

DL's online calendar has been broken since about the time of the NW takeover. If you want a DL ticket, you need to call them, even though there is an extra fee for that.

I agree the calendar is almost absolutely worthless. OTOH, I did find a low miles TATL Biz Class flight that I could not book no matter what I tried on line. I called and the rep could not book it either, another indication of the absurd Delta.Dumb web site.

However, they did find another flight for low miles in biz class, booked it for me and did not charge me anything.

Cheers

[Carolinian Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close Carolinian]

Never even consider Coach TATL or paying for them in any class at any time. I also avoid Europe in the Summer.

Cheers

When I was flying NW, I would never have considered using twice the miles for Biz, as with my elite status I always got in early enough to grab a bulkhead / exit row window seat, with more leg room than Biz, and in NW, we had free alcohol in coach.

For vacation, when I go depends on where I am going in Europe. If it is beach or lake or boating, of course it is summer. If is it in a country with a mild summer like UK or Scandanavia, then it will probably be summer. Too many interesting sites are either closed or open for reduced days or hours in the off season outside of the cities. If it is travel to a major city, then it will be Fall or Spring.

I just tried to get rid of another 60K DL miles unsuccesfully for a shoulder season TATL ticket for a relative. Given the city pair, the best cash price was over $1400, so it was a ticket that justified miles given a better than 2 cent per mile redemption. With DL, the last leg inbound started in Bucharest and that was availible but DL could not get the seats in to Bucharest and seemed confused on even how to get there. They first said that the only partner flying there was Alitalia. When I told the agent that Air France had multiple flights in daily from Paris and that SkyTeam partner TAROM had its main hub there and flew lots of places from Bucharest, that was news to her. Finally, she said she had nothing on the dates I wanted on any partner for the TATL legs, but with a change of dates and an overnight enroute (that seems to be a broken record with DL!), she had found a coach ticket for *ONLY* 150,000K miles! I called CO, and they had no trouble at all finding a ticket on the exact days requested and at the basic milage rate of 55K miles. Of course, with their partner carriers, the last leg goes from Vienna instead of Bucharest. Finding DL seats at the basic rate of 60K for a TATL coach ticket even in shoulder season is getting harder and harder.

This would not have been a difficult or expensive redemption on NW, but my remaining NW Worldperks miles have been transformed to increasingly worth less DL SkyPesos.