judyumcer

HAs anyone tried to book FF miles with Delta. I checked for Istanbul and they were 200,000 each. 2 yrs. ago; it was 120,000. This is a total rip-off. They say they have a 3 tied 100,000; 150,000 and 200,000. Well, we couldn't find any less than the 200,000. If this doesn't change; we will cancel our Delta AMEX rewards cards and go to something we can use reasonably. Anyone else had this problem with Delta?

greg

I presume you are looking at business/first class?

I pulled a departure city and travel dates out of hat and got:

LAX-IST 4/17/2009-4/30/2009 150,000miles
LAX-IST 1/13/2009-1/29/2009 100,000miles

Delta shows many variations of miles depending on dates, 195,000miles, 200,000miles, 245,000miles, etc, etc.

judyumcer

Amazing. Maybe it is because we are going in Sept. '09 and that is the high season. I also checked for June and found some for 100,000. What is up with this. i thought the sooner you booked the less miles required. Now, I am thinking the opposite.

ellenem

Just like the price of your tickets, it's based on demand, high season versus, low season, day of the week, and so forth.

Christina

I booked a RT flight to Paris (from Wash DC) using Delta miles with no problem whatsoever, I had many many choices of flights for the dates I wanted, or around them, and I only booked it a couple months ahead of time (I booked in July 2008 for Sept/Oct 2008, I just got back). It was really easy, I was actually quite surprised as how many possibilities were open to me. I think it was only 50K miles.

gracejoan3

The 50K miles now seem to be 60K. I have had my FF tickets for next April/May since mid June of this year. Glad I got them then. All seem to require more miles now. The plan has changed a lot..not to our advantage, either!

Good luck!

Guenmai

I've been on frequent flyer programs since the 80s. I had over 300,000 miles on Pan Am back in the day. I've also been connected to both Delta and United's frequent flyer programs since right after Delta bought up Pan Am's program.

As for getting tickets, it's usually not a big problem and I fly during high season 99% of the time. The magic number is 331, so 331 days before my planned outbound, I call the airline to try to get a ticket. Then I wait the 331-day period to get the inbound. Some airlines have changed their programs. For example, now on Delta, they wouldn't put the outbound on hold until I called back to try to get the inbound. They both have to be booked at the same time now. However, it's not so on United. I just got a ticket for Buenos Aires about 3 weeks ago for the end of summer 2009.I had no problem. United, put on hold, my chosen outbound flight and said to call back when it was the 331-day period to get my inbound flight. That way I didn't have to worry about someone else possibly getting the seat before me.
On European flights, my problem is trying to get across the U.S. to get to the east coast or south (Atlanta) where I'll need to change planes in in order to fly on to Europe. I'm from L.A. County so fly out of LAX.

So, many times I've had to do some very creative routing since the frequent flyer seats within the U.S. have many times already been booked, thus making it hard to get out of L.A. to fly east or south. But, I still usually end up on a plane with some kind of routing.
One of my best, male friends, e-mailed me a few weeks ago to tell me that as of October 01 the frequent flyer programs were going to change. He didn't say how they were going to change. But, I was a little nervous as I needed to call United back, for the inbound,on the Buenos Aires ticket, around October 04th or so. But, I wasn't affected by anything. I still got the ticket and using the same 50,000 miles for economy class. I've never in all the years on FF programs used more miles than the lowest number of miles needed whether or not it was high or low season. Happy Travels!

excited_confused

I have all my FF miles on Delta too & I find it a real pain. I had looked into tickets for a June trip to Europe in August & I was getting them for 50,000 miles. Now they have raised it to 60,000 with no dates available in June and many of the August dates also require 75.000 even though on the calender it says it is a low mileage date. My son Has AA miles and AA is much easier to work with, has more availability even closer to the date of travel, not 331 days ahead. I am going to use most of the Delta miles I have on this trip to Europe & then switch.

ellenem

I had no trouble getting FF tickets on Delta for any date i wanted for business class to Italy six weeks before my trip. However, I was traveling in March

Barb_in_Ga

I've had great success over the years with Delta, flying both coach and business class to Asia and Europe.

I just returned yesterday from a FF trip to Paris(coach) and I have a ticket for Spain in the spring that is business going over, coach coming home. I paid 50,000 for the Paris trip, and 70,000 for the Spain combination, which flies into Barcelona and out of Madrid.(I'm in Atlanta)

My best advice is to be flexible on dates, class of ticket, and destination city if possible. I once got great B Class seats into Brussels, then trained to Paris.

I think all airlines are facing a problem with the huge amount of FF miles that have been issued. My experience is a little flexibility and creativity has resulted in some pretty nice free flights.
Barb