Continental, Delta and Northwest are partners. Try using partner airlines when you call, but beware, most frequent flyer tickets are doubled on these airlines during the summer (June, July and August). A 25,000 ticket will be 50,000 miles. Could you make your flight in October?

If you want a nonstop ATL-SFO, Delta is your only option. CO or NW will route you through their hubs.

How are you checking? I just found the following availability on delta.com:

6/19 ATL-SFO DL578 departing at 5:45pm

7/11 SFO-ATL DL969 departing at 12:05pm

3 coach skysaver seats, all nonstops. I only checked 3 outbound dates and 1 return date.

Wow thanks for looking!

Yes that is the one combination I have found.... I am a little reluctant because of the 5:45pm timing. I will have a 6 year old, 3 year old and 4 month old and that is just a rough time. So I wasn't quite ready to commit. But I should if I want to use the miles. Who knows it could be the best time!

You can book what's available now and waitlist up to 4(?) additional DL operated flights. If you're waitlisted at the time of ticketing and your waitlist later clears, the change fee is waived. Also monitor the availability yourself from time to time as I've had instances where my waitlisted flight didn't automatically clear.

Keep an eye on schedule changes. Enough of a schedule change (I'd say around 90 minutes) allows you to choose alternate DL operated flights with or without skysaver availability. In a schedule change situation, the agents can override.

Good luck!

I think we're over our "mile hoarding" stage- we haven't done anything with them in well over a year, and we've mostly stopped flying that airline anyway, so we'll use them on whatever we can. We're thinking New Orleans Jazz Fest next.

I only use ours for Europe. It just seems to make sense to me since that's my #1 destination. When we got a new roof last year, that hurt, but when we put it on AMEX and got a "free" ticket to Europe, it helped ease the pain of having to put out that kind of money "only for a roof." :D

I earn miles faster than I can use them...

that said, I still try to get the best "value"

I usually do a OneWorld award, flying all over the world in style for much less than the numbers quoted above for single trip, using my AA miles.

I always keep ~200K miles for emergencies.

I would never use the miles for any domestic trip unless it's an emergency, but that's just me.

Everybody has their own needs and wants and has to decide what the miles are worth to them.

There is no one formula for everybody.

Forget the "value" and just trust your feelings and more importantly, make your decision based on your vacation budget.

Enjoy your trip! :-D