Award Availability on Delta/Partners

Award Availability on Delta/Partners

The others make it plain easy.

United and AA have a functional award calendar.  Their award calendars have a good number of their partners available through simple searches.

Remember that the key to a great award is flexibility.  

Delta gives a plain shameful showing on the award front.

Let's look at a simple search from STL (where I am) to BOM (always wanted to visit India) in November or December...

United

Okay -since I'd like to travel in business or first class, I should select the 3rd, 11th, or many of those dates in January.

No availability on United metal - how about partners?

Looks like there are flights with a seat in both business and first class available!  Great!

AA

Well, that was easy...

Delta

Let's search Delta now...

Okay - so that won't work.  60 days in either direction, and there's only one low award available outbound, and none on the return?  So you mean to tell me that United and AA (the other two big US airlines) will just let me click a date and book my travel.

Okay - so how is it done?  It takes patience, persistence, and lots of time.  Is it worth it?  Well, if you have a pile of skymiles and don't want to see them just sit and rot - then yes.

I'll post more on this tomorrow.  Needless to say, there is a low of work that goes into it but we can make something out of it!

Deriving value from Delta SkyMiles

Deriving value from Delta SkyMiles

Collecting miles for great trips can be a very lucrative hobby, and there are some key differences between programs.  One of the main differences is the availability of award spots from program to program.  United boasts the best and Delta - sadly - has the absolute worst availability.  This refers to the availability of low-level awards (shown below).

Not great availability from Delta.com

Great.  So now I have a giant pile of miles with Delta (you know they never expire), and apparently can't use them easily.  Well, there are a few things you should know about your miles... they are MUCH more valuable than other.  While you may not be able to book domestic awards easily, there is a lot of opportunity to put together great international itineraries.

Partners

Delta has a number of great partners through SkyTeam, as well as several other partners for award booking.  Unfortunately Delta does not make it easy to find availability on its partners, as the award search does not display the majority of the partners flights.   Because of this, putting together an award takes a bit more work.  This will require any number of the following things

• A flying blue account
• An ExpertFlyer account
• KVS access
• A ton of patience (calling Delta to request availability)

Stopovers and open-jaws

Delta's booking rules specifically state that you may book one stopover or one open jaw on each award ticket.  However, they regularly allow for both stopovers and open jaws on itineraries.  What this means for you is that you can see more destinations on your award ticket.  

All this for 120,000 SkyMiles (in business class!)

On the illustration here, not only would you get to see your final destination (MLE), but you could take a few days in Seoul prior to the trip, and take extra time in Singapore following your time in MLE.
These combinations make the possibilities nearly limitless.

More to come

Many thanks to the experts over on FlyerTalk who have spent countless hours putting together information for those of us who want to get the most from our miles.  I suggest reading the threads over at http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta-skymiles-665/ 

I'll post more in the upcoming days one how to put these awards together.

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F:Y Ratio - UA

F:Y Ratio on United

Yesterday I posted the F:Y ratio of the main domestic aircraft for Delta Airlines.  Today, I present to you the same information for UA.  Of note, UA flies a lot of different variants of the same plane, and so you'll have to be careful when reading this to ensure you pick the right one!

Plane	F seats	Y Seats	F: Y Ratio
Q400	7	64	0.11
E170	6	64	0.09
CR7	6	60	0.10
A319	8	112	0.07
A320	12	126	0.10
B735	8	100	0.08
B737-1	12	106	0.11
B737-2	12	112	0.11
B738-1	20	132	0.15
B738-2	16	144	0.11
B738-3	16	138	0.12
B738-4	14	141	0.10
B739-1/2	20	147	0.14
B739-3	20	153	0.13
B752-4	16	153	0.10
B752-5	24	164	0.15
B752-6	24	158	0.15
B753-1	24	189	0.13
B753-2	24	192	0.13
B787	36	183	0.20

United Airlines Boeing 757-200-Version 6

Notably, UA has a couple of aircraft with exceptional F:Y ratios.  The 737-800 (variant 1) and most of the 757 fleet are above 0.15, which is pretty darn good.   And the 787 (if it is ever deemed airworthy again) boasts a great 0.20 ratio.  I know this is an international aircraft, but I have seen a few domestic flights with this bird.

I will keep updating with F:Y ratios until I get through US and AA.

Cheers!

Tim

F:Y Ratio

F:Y Ratio - Delta domestic aircraft

I used to make the mistake of assuming more seats/bigger planes meant better chances of an upgrade - but I realized that this logic was flawed.  As planes get bigger, airlines sell more tickets, and the number of people vying for an upgrade also increases.  Because of this, I went in search of other means of picking the right route to help my upgrade chances.  

Which would you choose?

The importance of the F:Y ratio was discussed in my post about increasing your odds of an upgrade on your next flight.  The F:Y ratio is essentially a reflection of how many people are fighting for the same spot.  The number listed is a ratio of the number of seats in F compared with the number of seats in Y.  

With a number of 0.1, that means that there will be 10 seats in Y for every one seat in F, and if you're a low ranking elite, you're not going to fare well on busy days.  A plane with a ratio of 0.15 means there are only about 7 seats in Y for every seat in F - much better chances for the low (or any for that matter) elite!

If you ever have the option to fly a time or routing that optimizes your F:Y ratio, then do it!

Delta Airlines

Below is a listing of Delta aircraft (which regularly fly domestic routes) and their respective F:Y ratios.

Plane	F seats	EC Seats	Y Seats	F: Y Ratio
CRJ/ERJ	0	0	50	0.00
CR7	9	8	48	0.16
CR9	12	12	52	0.19
E170	9	12	48	0.15
E175	12	12	52	0.19
MD88	16	15	118	0.12
MD90	16	15	129	0.11
DC9	16	14	90	0.15
A319	12	18	96	0.11
A320	12	18	120	0.09
B737	12	18	94	0.11
B738	16	18	126	0.11
B757-200 (J,M,N)	22	18	141	0.14
B757-200 (U)	24	21	135	0.15
B757-200 (V)	22	21	132	0.14
B757-200 (75X)	26	26	132	0.16
B757-300	24	23	177	0.12
B767-300	30	28	203	0.13

Two things are apparent from this - first is that the CRJ and the A320 are terrible airplanes for those looking for upgrades.  Second is that Delta has too many variants of the B757-200 - they all have slightly different ratios too.  It seems the best way to know which one you'll be on is by the number of F seats.

By looking at this chart, can you see why I prefer to get on CR9 and E175s whenever possible?

For updates, please follow me on Twitter (see the link on the right)!

Best of luck and safe travels!

Tim