eenusa

It's too early to book my award seats for the dates I am interested in, but I am wondering if someone can answer this question for me.

Specifically for DELTA and CONTINENTAL as they both participate in American Express Rewards from where I have to transfer points: The seats for the outbound leg of our trip will become available on 5/8 and the ones for the return trip will become available 5/22. Will Delta/Continental allow me to reserve (on 5/8) the outbound seats for two weeks and then complete booking the R/T seats when the return leg becomes available on 5/22? Or do I have to wait until 5/22 to reserve/book both legs of the trip at the same time?

If they do allow this, do they then count it as two one-way tickets, thus increasing the required miles?

Thanks in advance for your expertise on this matter.

travelgourmet

For Continental, it likely makes no difference, as they do not (as a rule) open seats at a pre-determined interval. And they almost never open anything of value that far in advance. For a Continental ticket, your best chance at awards will be closer to the departure date (within 2 months, perhaps?)

In general, however, Continental will let you hold tickets for a pretty decent length of time, so you might get lucky. Note that they are not allowed to hold KLM tickets.

eenusa

Thx travelgourmet - I was going by the 331 days as that seems to be the norm for Delta -- the flights Delta's website is showing now for February '09 are Continental, so perhaps there's hope that for SA they open award seats earlier. Will keep checking.

travelgourmet

Always worth looking. I would just keep looking as you get closer to the date.

For what it is worth, I find that calling the airline works better than trying to do it all online.

Also, remember that the online tools aren't perfect. If you mix and match carriers, you might be able to find combinations that the website won't. So, I will often work backwards from the destination city.

For example, if I want to go from Boston to Buenos Aires with Continental miles, I will find out which partners fly to Buenos Aires. In this case, Aeromexico, Delta, Continental, and Copa all fly there. So, I will search for ATL-BUE on Delta, IAH-BUE on Continental, and so on. I will do the same for the return. If I can find a flight from ATL-BUE on the way down and BUE-IAH on the way back, I will note this.

Then I will search for flights to ATL and from IAH. Let's say that IAH is easy, and that Continental has a seat available. Great, I note this. But I can't find anything to ATL.

Well, I would work backwards from ATL, as well. Which other hubs are served from ATL? Well, I get MSP, DTW, EWR, JFK, and so on. Working through the combinations, I might find that I can get from DTW to ATL on Delta and from BOS to DTW on Northwest.

Now, my itinerary looks like this:

BOS-DTW on Northwest
DTW-ATL on Delta
ATL-BUE on Delta
BUE-IAH on Continental
IAH-BOS on Continental

This would be a combination that you might not find if you just type in BOS-BUE into the online search fields and hope for the best. And I will call up the phone agents and walk them through flight by flight. It doesn't work everytime, but it helps.

Patty

Assuming availability is the same through either program, I think CO allows the longer hold although I'm unsure exactly how many days it is currently.

DL will only hold online award reservations for 2 days and there's no hold on phone award reservations anymore (though it's possible they'll still do 2 day phone holds for Medallions).

The procedure with DL is to ticket the outbound and add the return later. It's still considered a roundtrip award but the ticket needs to be reissued at the time you add the return. They used to waive the reissue fee but I don't know if they'll do it anymore. If not, the current reissue fee is $100 per ticket. Lots of changes to Skymiles went into effect mid-March and April 1st and I haven't redeemed anything since then. Doing it this way does mean that you risk transferring miles into DL first without knowing if you can definitely get the return flights you want. So if CO allows a 2 week hold and award availability if the same, I'd ticket through CO.

Is SA South America? With DL, in addition to the carriers listed by travelgourmet, you also have Avianca as an option.

eenusa

Thank you both.

Patty SA is South America - specifically Peru.

MomDDTravel

Thanks for asking this eenusa - I too want to do an award ticket through mainly my AMEX points via Delta and we are staying about 5-6 weeks so it makes it more challenging to book in advance.

I will call them in about a month when it is 331 days from the outbound and see what I can do.

Thanks again,
~ D

Dana_M

Re: Waiving the Re-issue Fee:
I just redeemed Delta miles and I could not get them to waive the re-issue fee. I did as Patty suggests and booked the outbound the day seats became available. I then called the day return seats became available to book the return. I was told at the time I booked the outbound I'd have to pay the re-issue fee, and was prepared for it, but I still tried to get it waived when I booked the return. Well, it did not work.

MomDDTravel

Okay so what you are all saying is that I can book the outbound and then redeposit and rebook the entire trip?

I think I will just wait it out. I do not have specific dates I need to be there, or a definate destination. I am hoping to go from Amsterdam (area) down to Italy and then spend 3 weeks in a small town outside of Lecci and then travel for an additional 10 plus days through out Italy.

~ D

NoFlyZone

Note also that, for Delta at least, award seats are not necessarily released at the 331 day window. The past few months they have stopped doing that on many flights and, rather, are releasing seats from time to time up until a week or so prior to the flight. So if the seats you want are not available at 331 days, try daily, maybe for months, until they do become available.

Also, there is no hold provision any more, although they have been doing courtesy 24-28 hour holds under certain circumstances.

Patty

MomDDTravel,
Technically, you're not redepositing and rebooking the entire itinerary, just adding the return and reissuing the ticket.

MomDDTravel

Thanks again Patty.

~D

DRJ

Latest from Flyertalk.com: DL has abandoned the 331 day release.

MomDDTravel

DRJ - I could not find the area you were speaking of - do you mind sharing what you heard/mean? I have over 110,000 Delta miles that I moved around to get (American Express and took out a Delta Amex card just for the points). I am not traveling till Spring of 09 to Europe...

~D

eenusa

I believe what DRJ is referring to is that Delta no longer waits 331 days from a specific date to release Award Seats. Rather, from time to time they set seats aside for Award booking.

DRJ - I could not see the specific thread you were referring to either, by the way.

'll have to check the Delta site again, to see if by chance April '09 dates are now available.

MomDDTravel

eenusa - I could only find up to March of 09 in Delta.

Thanks for clearing up what DRJ was refering to - I will keep checking - as I said, I do not have "locked" dates just the spring time - when it is a little warmer but not too crowded

~D

WillTravel

This is an intuition, rather than something I know for sure, particularly about Delta, which I don't use.

But I did get two 25,000-mile tickets last year when Continental had a special deal from US cities to Cologne (I got mine from SEA). Then I got really cheap fares to German cities this year on United.

My general impression/intuition is that German cities may be easier to get frequent flyer tickets for than popular tourist cities like Paris or Amsterdam or Rome. And it is very easy to get from many German cities to the most popular places, either by rail or budget flights.

So for Delta, for example, maybe Dusseldorf might work.

MomDDTravel

Willtravel - THAT is exactly the kind of advice I am looking for and was going to post to see what thoughts were on the "easiest" places to get FF awards to Europe. I want to do a World War 11 "study" of sorts with dd during the trip. I was thinking on the front end, then 3 weeks in the Italy Immersion school so we will be in one place during that time (Our apartment is 320 Euros for the week! - shows me how inexpensive the non-tourist areas of Italy can be!)... and then 10 days to 2 weeks travel in Italy. Dh might join us at some point. Perhaps while at the school. He might "do" better in one place and it is on the water...anyway - that is all another post/thread.

I will keep checking on the Germany arrivals.

I have about 110,000 Delta miles right now... Do not see getting many more by the time I book.

~D