Looking for info on Delta FF program
 

I'm new to the whole frequent flier concept, so I'm looking to the always knowledgable Fodorites for help! :)

First, the situation... My husband and I belong to Delta Sky Miles and have the mileage from 1 international trip in our respective accounts. Obviously, that's not enough for anything, so we're looking for ways to build our miles. We want to go open jaw LAS-MXP, VCE-LAS in November 2006 and would love to do it Business/First class the whole way. Of course, that's expensive to buy outright so we're looking for ways to reduce the cost of one or both tickets.

We're considering getting the American Express Delta CC that builds miles, but I want to understand the redemption process first. If we build enough miles but can't use them, that would be a waste of time and effort.

From what I read on their website, there's 2 ways to get to a better class seat using your miles. First, you can book one outright using miles and second is to upgrade from a purchased coach seat. From their charts, it looks like you need approx. 90,000 miles to get a business/first seat or 12-25,000 miles for an upgrade from coach. Is this correct? How hard is it to actually get these upgrades on your selected flight? How far in advance do you need to book?

Again, thanks in advance for the advice. If there's a website that I can go to for further information, I would love that, too!

Certainly not 12K-25K to upgrade from coach to business going to Europe. Try about 40K-60K depending on whose FF program. And even if upgrading from coach, Delta and others, require that the coach ticket be a certain class (not the cheapest, deepest discounted) ticket or there's a cash supplement.

Unless you can build up these miles (more flights, or with credit card purchases, etc.) by the time you need to purchase your ticket, it's not likely. Besides, as most frequent flyers know, you've got to book those FF mileage award tickets way ahead (months) of actual departure.

All programs are different, so you've got to read the specifics for Delta and also the Amex program and see how your likely flying and spending habits will work in conjunction. I'm sure there will be others who can shed more light on this subject.

Sandi,
Thanks for the reply. We have some time to build miles and plan ahead - since we're not going until Nov. 2006. (I'm an early planner...)

The mile upgrade sounded low to me, too which is why I asked. Here's the webpage I was looking at if you're interested. It says you can get a "one-class upgrade from Full Economy Fare" for 15,000, but maybe I'm misunderstanding what they really mean...

https://www.delta.com/skymiles/use/d...ards/index.jsp

If you fly infrequently, and/or you need to go on a trip during a specific time frame, don't bother with the FF miles. It's simply going to drive you insane and frustrated.

Instead, just look for good deals on business class travel. November may be hard, but Continental and other airlines now regularly has business class fares around $2,000 to Europe during summer, Thanskgiving and Christmas time period.

rkkwan-
Is it really that tough to book using FF miles? We've already nailed down our dates: Nov 18th - Dec. 2nd. We were hoping the off Thanksgiving travel dates would make it easier to book using FF.

I've been seeing flights on Delta for around $2400/pp but I wasn't sure if Business class ever goes on sale. Any chance of that?

US to Europe upgrades for 15000 Skymiles each way are from full fare economy tickets only. Upgrades for 25000 each way are from B or M class economy fares only. You cannot upgrade a paid economy ticket in the cheaper fare classes. M fares ex-LAX to Europe run about $1600+ whereas the lowest discounted business I class fares can be found for $2100+. So consider the cost of the upgradeable fares if you're planning to use your miles for upgrades.

To get a free business class ticket to Europe outright, it is 90,000 miles per person. You can redeem Skymiles on a number of Skyteam carriers to Europe including Delta, Air France, Alitalia, Czech, Continental, Northwest, and KLM. You can mix and match mulitple Skyteam carriers on one Skyteam award. If you have some flexibility with your dates and since you're traveling in low season, you should have no problems getting 2 business class seats on one or a combination of the above carriers. It may not be your first choice of routing but I don't see a real problem with availability. I usually make award reservations between 3-6 months in advance but have also successfully done so closer to departure.

For 100,000 miles each you can also redeem Skymiles for Virgin Atlantic Upper Class tickets. This is a non-Skyteam partner, so you won't be able to mix carriers and the award will only get you as far as the UK. You'll have to buy your own onward tickets to Italy.

The standard Amex card first purchase bonus offers are 10,000 Skymiles for Gold and 15,000 Skymiles for Platinum. With the Platinum Delta Amex, you will also receive 10,000 bonus miles if you charge at least $25,000 in your first year of card membership (posted about 8 weeks after your anniversary date). The first year's fee for the Gold card is almost always waived. I've not found that Amex waives the Platinum card fee.

You can apply for one personal card and one small business card each and receive separate bonuses for each card. There may be better offers than the standard bonuses so check around first before you apply (sometimes there are extra 5000 bonuses, sometimes the extra bonuses are for spending x amount of dollars within x number of months of opening your account).

Check www.freefrequentflyermiles.com to see if there are better offers, also read the Delta board at www.flyertalk.com - unfortunately the search function at flyertalk is down for the time being which makes it a bit difficult to find the information you need.

Frequently, after you've received the card, you'll get a solicitation for an additional 1000 to 2000 bonus Skymiles for adding additional cardholders to your account.

Hope this helps.

Patty,
Wow- that pretty much summed it up! I just have a few more questions on the whole upgrade thing...

First, to get an upgrade, do you have to buy your ticket first or book the whole thing through Sky Miles? Second, how can you tell what class your ticket will be when looking online?

Would the B or M classes refer to the middle tier coach and constitute a 25,000 mile upgrade? Then would the Flexible coach be the 15,000 mile upgrade?

Last, is it really difficult to use upgrades for specific dates when booking well in advance? How far in advance could I book using the upgrade method?

Thanks again for everyone's help! :)

jbee,
If the $2400 fare you saw was for business class, then that IS the sale fare. Did it indicate that it was booked in I class? Fares generally will not go under $2000 for western US to Europe flights. Full undiscounted business is around $6000+.

Do you have +/- 1 day flexibility in your dates? Based on my personal experience, you shouldn't have problems getting award seats for late Nov/early Dec to Europe as long as you have a little flexibility with your dates and are willing to make an extra stop or so. Between all of the Skyteam carriers, there should be some alternative for you even if it's not the most direct routing. Air France generally has very good O class (business award) availability.

Disclaimer: Everything I've said is based on experience and information up until now. I cannot predict if Delta will make any drastic changes to their Skymiles program or award seat availability by late 2006 :)

<First, to get an upgrade, do you have to buy your ticket first or book the whole thing through Sky Miles? Second, how can you tell what class your ticket will be when looking online?>

You should call Delta first to determine upgrade availability before purchasing the tickets (or purchase the tickets at the same time). If purchase tickets without checking upgrade availability first, you run the risk of sitting in economy while paying for very expensive tickets ;) You can see the fare class on delta.com during the reservation process, under the box labeled 'Cabin & Class' - the fare class is indicated in parenthesis.

<Would the B or M classes refer to the middle tier coach and constitute a 25,000 mile upgrade? Then would the Flexible coach be the 15,000 mile upgrade?>

Yes that's correct. Also the mileage required for upgrade is each way, so you're looking at 50,000 miles roundtrip for each ticket upgrading from an M fare.

<Last, is it really difficult to use upgrades for specific dates when booking well in advance? How far in advance could I book using the upgrade method?>

I don't have much experience with upgrade availability as I find the M fares too high. The best source of info would be on the Delta board at flyertalk.com :)

Sorry, I forgot to mention that Continental considers their business class product 'first class' so if any part of your free award ticket involves travel on CO BusinessFirst, then it'll cost you 100,000 miles per ticket rather than 90,000.

Ah ha. I found the class explanation. Thanks! It sounds like it's almost more trouble than it's worth to do class upgrades. Now we have to figure out how many miles we THINK we can rack up in a year. 90,000 miles translates into a lot of shoes! ;)

I'll do more research on flyertalk as well, but this has been very helpful. I actually just have 1 more tiny question. If we do end up with enough miles to get 1 free business seat, would we have to book the other separate or would they do that for us? If not, would we run any risk of not being able to book the 2nd seat?

Just a slight amendment to what I said earlier. When you choose 'Coach (Flexible)' on delta.com, it normally displays the M fare, not the full Y fare. I think you have to call Delta for that.

<If we do end up with enough miles to get 1 free business seat, would we have to book the other separate or would they do that for us? If not, would we run any risk of not being able to book the 2nd seat?>

Do you mean you'll book one award seat and pay for the second seat? If so, I would confirm award space first (Delta will hold your award reservation for 14 days) and then check the fare for the same flights. The agent you speak with can do this for you or you can do it online (sometimes delta.com doesn't display every possible routing though). Ask for the international partner award desk when you're ready to check award availability. I fares have to be purchased at least 42(?) days in advance.

Keep in mind that you can't combine the miles between 2 accounts (except for a very limited amount for a fee) so all (or most) of the miles for the free ticket will have to come from one person's account.

Check the 2 sites I listed religiously for other mileage opportunities. Last year I was able to buy an Intercontinental Ambassador membership which came with 25,000 Skymiles and a free weekend night certificate for $150. A couple of months ago, there was an online game on delta.com that offered 10,000 bonus miles for free. The game took 5 minutes to play and I was able to get 10,000 miles each for me and 5 other family members :) - all of these promos were limited in nature with the online game lasting only 36 hours or so.

There are so many ways to rack up miles if you're nuts, I mean devoted ;) I just recently closed a home equity line with Chase for miles.

And then there's always the old fashioned method of earning miles by actually flying!

Boy, I wish we could do more of the old fashioned way to build miles! :) I was reading some of the crazy things people do on flyertalk and it blew my mind. I guess I'm not that fanatic, but I could see myself getting there!

Thanks again for all the information. I think I have enough to make an educated decision on whether or not we can make it mile-wise. I'm also going to call my FF brother and see if he would donate his miles to his favorite sister... ;)

Thanks Patty for the detailed explanation. While I used to have the DL AMEX Plantinum, and plenty of Skymiles myself, I now know more about CO than DL, and I wouldn't have the patience to explain as well as Patty did.

Just want to emphasize one point again. It's indeed usually easier to use miles outright for a business ticket. So, I agree that you should concentrate on getting enough miles for ONE business ticket outright, rather than two upgrades.

And don't worry about one award and one paid ticket. If they have award availability, they absolutely will have tickets for sale too. And as Patty explained, the Skymiles agent can do that for you, or just put the award on hold and then go purchase the other ticket.

BTW, the BusinessFirst product on CO is significantly better than DL's BusinessElite product. Worth the extra 10,000 miles. Or even better, get an Air France First Class award for 100,000. If you only have 90,000, consider NW's World Business Class.

A lot of the claims on flyertalk are, shall we say, exaggerated. Most of the habituees there are business travelers who have "earned" their miles with tickets paid for by others.

I know some of them claim to pay their mortgages with credit cards to earn points, but I suspect that in order to do that they have to take a mortgage at higher than market rates. We often don't realize that when we pay a "merchant" with a credit card, the "merchant" must forfeit a commission to the credit card company for the privilege of using their system. I have read that this commission is as high as 1.5%. Now, with interest rates on mortgages at very low rates (may we assume 6%), I find it hard to believe that a banker would be happy to pay a commission of 1.5%, not just on the principal, not just on the principal and interest, but on the principal, interest, and escrow. So I expect that to pay your mortgage with a credit card, you must take a mortgage at higher than market rate. It follows that you are not earning miles, you are buying them, probably without calculating the cost. If you are interested in that, I do have a very good deal on some slightly used lottery tickets.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that a great number of the claims are exaggerated. Sure some of the offers aren't good deals (these will generally be pointed out by others) and some may require too much of an investment in time and energy, which is why you have to use your own judgement to pick and choose carefully, but there are some true gems as well. Good luck! :)

Again, thanks for all the help! rkkwan - thanks for the airline info. We picked Delta because they have the most direct flights between LAS and Italy. If it takes 100,000 to fly on Virgin, that would definitely be worth the extra 10,000 as well!

clevlandbrown - Thanks for the lottery ticket offer.... ;) Seriously though, if we were to go the CC route, we would charge EVERYTHING to it, including all of our bills. I checked with all my companies and they all accept CC payments with no additional charges. We actually just refinanced and got a killer rate, so I guess my bank doesn't mind paying those charges.

Here's an update for those of you following my saga... I have a friend who is willing to donate her United miles to our cause (I think around 90k) so I'm going to do some research into their plan, too. Maybe we'll end up on United with more transfers but a free ticket.

clevelandbrown - fyi - the company where I work accepts Amex and we don't have that many amex transactions, maybe $40,000 per month. Our "discount fee" is 2.95% per transaction. So if someone pays a $3000 bill with their Amex card it costs us $88.50 plus the "float" on the money (3 banking days). That's quite a chunk of money.

I did call Amex to see if we could get our discount lowered and she actually laughed. I have heard of other small companies like ours paying as much as a 7% fee.

Sundowner,

Ouch! I had only limited information about other credit cards, but I believe their "discount fee" may vary with the location, size, and type of business, but they certainly guard the information.

I knew it had to be substantial, because so many credit cards now offer a 1% or higher rebate, and I know they are in business to make a profit. Some months ago I read that some companies were considering cancelling the cards of those of us who are unsporting enough to pay out balance completely every month.

Not trying to hijack this thread, but it seems that "there are people here that know things" :) So i ask the this question. Do you know if it's possible to combine miles on Alaska with miles on Delta for a ff trip to Europe?