Am I correct, that there is absolutely NO WAY to hold an outbound DL/KLM flight using FF points while waiting for the return to come within range?

I've called, but they told me absolutely no way, nada, zip. Are they right?

It seems that is the case. 48 hours only, so that if you are going somewhere for 2 weeks, you can only hold the outbound for 48 hours which won't give you a chance to be sure you can get return.

Have you ever read flyertalk.com message boards?

Here is the one for Delta FF

http://flyertalk.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=489

You can read posts without signing up.

Deb

Dana,
Prior to the no award hold by telephone policy, the procedure for booking awards at the 331 day mark when your return isn't in range was to ticket your outbound as a one way. Once your return date is within the 331 day window, you could add the return and reissue the ticket without a fee. I've done this without any issues.

From what understand, you can still do the same. However, they won't waive the reissue fee anymore when you add the return. I haven't tested this and would still press them to waive the reissue fee.

But be aware that award inventory may not be loaded at 331 days.

Deb,
Do I understand correctly that you had another award itinerary on hold? Could you have asked the agent to just redeposit the old award and redeemed the new award online? I think by simply saying that the schedule change no longer works for you and you need to redeposit the award, they would have waived the redeposit fee. I've redeposited awards due to schedule changes without reissuing anything and had the fee waived (similar to getting a refund on a paid ticket with a schedule change). In your case, I think the redeposit and reissue with a new origin complicated things and caused confusion although I think they should've waived it anyway.

Thanks Patti. That is exactly what I thought I was asking her to do. Either book it as a one-way now and add the return later, or hold it until the return flights opened. She put me on hold for a long time, and then told me that she could do neither. She told me that the only thing I could do was to book a one way now, and that when I booked the return I would be charged one way again, so it would cost me double miles.

So now I'm going to call and book that one way trip with FF points. If I can't get the round trip (even if I have to pay the re-issue fee, which is OK)for the same mileage I will have already used for the one way, then I'll just have them re-deposit the miles and buy a ticket on another airline.

Thanks for your help.

Good luck, Dana! Let us know how it works out.

Argh. Thanks for the heads-up, guys. Reading this, I felt compelled to check our DL flights to BOS in late-May (thinking they'd never cancel such a popular route) and, sure enough, they now changed our direct flight from LAX to now connect through Cleveland on the way there and Atlanta on the way back. Suffice it to say, I'm slighly annoyed, given we're going to a wedding and now we're going to be late. Oh well, time to call Delta and give 'em an earful. I suspect we'll be cashing our miles back in and flying on JetBlue now.
What is UP with Delta--they are going down the tubes!

filmwill,
Looks like LAX-BOS is now one nonstop a day. If the schedule works for you, you can also ask to be rebooked on this nonstop.

Hi Debi,
Wow, your situation is even worse than ours was. The problem is that Delta put all of these new “rules” in place and the ticket agents (and apparently in your case even supervisors) can’t (or won’t) override them even if common sense would be to do so. When I spoke with the agent on the phone she would not allow us to hold our original flights and also hold the flights that they had re-booked us on. We did not use miles for the flights, but she said even if we agreed to pay for both flights (in both directions), that the second booking could cancel the first. I understand that is usually the policy, but with such an unusual situation I’d hoped they’d make an exception. She said no way. She also said that once we made a change, or accepted their change, that any further change would not be free. One free change per itinerary change, no exceptions. And, if fares went up we’d also have to pay the difference if we made another change. So we told her that we did not want to accept the change yet, and left our original/now revised itinerary intact.

When I was at the airport for another trip, I went to the ticket agent at the counter. I had everybody’s itineraries/confirms with me, and although it took him about 30 minutes, he managed to double book us on the domestic flights in both directions. I check everyday, and all of the flights are still there. The only thing he could not do is assign us seats, but I was able to select those on-line.

I obviously think they should refund your change fees. That really is absurd. I am so sorry for your troubles. Planning a trip is supposed to be fun, not full of unwanted surprises before you leave.

I do read some of the message boards, but sometimes I’d just rather not know what is going on. I find coming here for advice much more pleasant because I read trip reports and look at photos in between reading the airline posts.

I hope you enjoy your trip and that they don’t change your schedule too many times before you leave.

I must be a glutton for punishment as I think I will call and try again today using the argument that if I had been told that I get 1 free change that they admit there was a problem with schedule change and that I should have had the option to cancel the original tickets and simply had the redeposited into my account with no fee. I could have then just simply booked my new flights.

Deb

Patty,
Thanks for your advice. I have my outbound booked. YIPPEE!!

I’m flying into EBB instead of JRO, so I’ll have to do my trip in reverse order. But, this reverse order was my original plan anyway, so I’m fine with it. And, I am leaving a day earlier than planned, but that is fine also. One extra day in Africa certainly won’t hurt my feelings. And according to the agent they haven’t opened up the first class award seats on BHM-ATL, so I’m in coach, but I am in my favorite coach class seat, exit row aisle, on the right in a 3-2 configuration and the flight is less than an hour, so I'm fine with that also. Lastly, I’m on DL (not KLM) from ATL-AMS because while KLM has AMS-EBB open, they aren’t showing ATL-AMS within range yet. This didn’t make any sense to me, but what the heck, I’m booked. I wonder if that is because DL also flies ATL-AMS? It was a little odd that ATL-AMS was not “within range” on KLM but AMS-EBB was. He said the flight wasn’t open yet, but I think he meant award availability hadn’t opened up yet. Doesn’t matter, I didn’t want to risk not getting a ticket, so I took what he had.

And, since I did book the Africa award ticket, if KLM opens up AMS-EBB or AMS-JRO and award seats are still availble when I book the return, I can make changes then, all for the same re-issue fee, which I’ll happily pay if it all works out.

I tried to book just BHM-ATL and ATL-AMS and leave the AMS-either EBB or JRO open with the intent of calling back every day, and deciding later if I would go to EBB or JRO if JRO opened up. However, the agent (who was extremely helpful) said because it was a different award level, it just would not work. I do not know if he is right or not, but honestly did not care. I did not want to let him off the phone he was so helpful. So, I just said “if you can get me to either JRO or EBB, departing BHM or ATL, on either 2/19 or 2/20, in BE in an aisle seat, I’ll be happy” and he did.

Thanks for your help. Keep your fingers crossed for me on April 16th when I start calling about my return.

Good luck, Deb!

Dana,
If you want, you can waitlist BHM-ATL in first. Previously, there was no reissue fee when a waitlisted flight clears but confirm that that's still the case. Award waitlist is for DL operated flights only. I too think that the agent meant no award seats were open for the KL ATL-AMS flight though he used a strange choice of words. FWIW I prefer DL over KL up front. It's good you booked AMS-EBB now. There's always the possibility that neither AMS-EBB nor AMS-JRO is available when you check again. Then you might have to resort to KQ via NBO (which actually has an excellent long haul hard product, better than KL, but means an extra connection). Good luck with your return!

Luckily, we were able to change our flights back to a direct flight--but had to change departure days by 1 day in both directions. Apparently there is only 1 N/S LAX-BOS per day and it doesn't run every day.

Not to hijack your discussion, guys, but I actually am very curious as to what on God's green Earth is going on with Delta? It's inexcusable for an airline to cut 10% of its schedule and not notify customers and then pretend like it never happened. You'd expect some sort of "heartfelt" mass email from their CEO about cost-cutting, tough times, etc, etc.

A few members of my family had to make the same changes as us today and all the call reps at Delta, interestingly enough, had the same response for all of us: "Oh, we emailed you about the change"...and obviously none of us were ever notified about anything.

Here's the best part: when they reissued my tix they asked, 'Would you like us to email that to you, sir?" and when I replied "Yes, please" they responded, "Oh, it looks like we don't have your email." Needless to say she was at a loss for words when I proceeded to ask, "Well, how did you email me about the schedule change then?"

Is this a sign of Delta's inevitable demise? Someone please buy out this airline now!

So I called back and they are holding fast to the change fee/

I have given up, taken the $150 as the cost of tickets and need to move on.

They have really just lost me as a long time customer.

Deb

Patty,
Before I even asked about wait listing for 1st class the agent offered what he said was the only solution. He said that normally they'd waitlist me for first class (which I knew) but he couldn't because of “another one of the terrible changes that went into effect on St. Patrick's Day.” Those weren't his exact words, but they are close. He said to call every day, or to check the website every day, and when the 1st class award seats are released to call back and they'd make the change without any fee, since my award ticket is already for first/BE.

I'm fine with DL to AMS instead of KL to AMS. I just thought with all of these changes going on I might prefer to be on KL all the way from ATL. The last thing I need is for the DL ATL-AMS times to change and mess up the AMS-EBB connection. I can see it now: "we've changed your departure time by one hour....but that's ok because after all it's an 8 hr. flight and the pilot will probably be able to make most of that time up in the air..." only to be told later “but we had to change your AMS-EBB flight to the next available flight (which happens to be two days later) because you have an illegal connection in AMS.” Actually, I don’t think there is a chance of that happening on the outbound. I think ATL only cares about connection time on the international inbound, so I should be fine.

Getting off-topic, but in my opinion, the chance of DL changing the ATL-AMS flight by more than an hour is significantly lower than KL canceling your longhaul flight because they run out of aircrafts.

Dana,
Either that agent was wrong or Jeff Robertson, the managing director of Skymiles, is ;)

<i>Question: We heard you are discontinuing the award waitlist capability?

Answer: False. We continue to offer the ability to award waitlist for all customers. Although we are reviewing the waitlist process, particularly in light of the upcoming award program announcements around three tiers, there is no change in the current waitlist program</i>

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=805099

Ditto rkkwan's last post.

And even if your DL flight moved back by an hour (which I don't think will happen), you still wouldn't run into minimum connect time issues (which I think is 50 min for non-Schengen connections) with the AMS-EBB flight.

Patty and Rkkwan,
I guess I was just being a little pessimistic after the way DL re-booked the Costa Rica trip. Honestly, if I were that worried about it, I wouldn't have booked what I did. I am actually quite happy with my arrangements thus far.

Patty--I'll call back and ask to be waitlisted for first. Thanks for the flyertalk link.

Patty, I called back and they said the exact same thing..they can no longer waitlist for award capacity. Then I read the agent the quote and when it was posted on flyertalk. He paused, said oh, 3:45 yesterday, let me see, and put me on hold. He came back and said ok. THANK YOU!

I guess the agents are getting bad information. I'm sure glad I don't have their jobs.

Add a new one - $3.00 per bag for curbside check-in effective April 1st. As with the second bag fee, it looks like F/J/elite are exempt.