As reported on Milepoint, searching and booking business class award space on Korean Airlines just got easier.
Delta Skymiles partners with Korean, it’s always been a bit of a pain because you cannot search for Korean Airlines award space on the Delta website and you cannot use the Korean website either unless you have enough Skypass miles in your Korean account to actually complete the booking.
That means you’ve been pretty much at the mercy of Delta Skymiles agents, and with all of the different booking classes and blackout dates and probably more importantly variability in agent quality (Delta agents frequently don’t even know who their partners are, let alone how to book partner award seats, or even that you’re allowed to on a route that Delta also serves) that can be a real challenge.
But Skyteam is beginning to align its award booking classes, the way that Star Alliance has. Across the entire Star Aliance, coach award space is X, business is I, and first class is O. Korean Airlines is adopting O as its business class award bucket, just like Air France uses. And the space is searchable at pay service Expert Flyer (which will also give you a 5 day free trial).
Early reports are that Korean’s O inventory, when it shows as open, is bookable by Delta — with the caveat that Delta enforces blackout dates broadly for awards on Korean. Which is to say that generally any time Korean has a blackout date on any route in their system, Delta blacks it out for every route in their system. So even though O shows open on Expertflyer, and would be bookable with other partner miles, Delta may not let you book it due to blackout dates.
However, there are of course other ways to access the space — American Express points transfer to Air France/KLM Flying Blue (with a 25% bonus currently) and Chase Ultimate Rewards points transfer to Korean Airlines directly, of course in either case you’re going to incur fuel surcharges in addition to taxes.
Helpful, thanks.
You can also use Alaska miles to fly Korean, right?
If you want a free interface to search the Korean inventory (and several others) including alerts there is also my Reward Search site: http://wandr.me/AirlineAwards.
I’m making a few updates to it this weekend to further improve the data display, but the functionality is solid. You don’t even need to remember the specific buckets as I’ve programmed that in for you.
Oh, and it covers more than just Korean.
Enjoy!
@Gary, how do you find those blackout dates imposed by Delta? Thanks.
@Jim, You need to call Delta and ask….actually you need to call at least twice to see if you get the same answer both times……..
@jim and @JohnnieD, no need to call, they’re visible in the fare rules on delta.com when you try a booking including any partner (so find an Air France or KLM flight and start the booking process). Or you can check this post on MilePoint http://milepoint.com/forums/threads/the-definitive-guide-to-booking-a-skymiles-award.385/page-4#post-544767
Well as usual EF is a tool that gives lots of misinformation. If you see 2 seats available on the KE long-haul flights to the states there are 0 flights available. If you see 3 then there is 1 seat available.
@Nathan, Seems bizarre to bash EF when all they’re doing is reporting the information that KE is publishing into the GDS. Perhaps KE reduces by 2 what it gives to partners vs. what it’s willing to offer to its own members. What I’d really like to do is have someone compare what DL agents see to what Flying Blue agents see. The final step would be to find out what dates Flying Blue blacks out award tickets on KE (and if it’s done by route) to compare with DL’s awful implementation.
@Nathan, We don’t claim that the award inventory shown is available to partners, just that it is available to that airlines frequent flyers. It may or may not be available to partner programs as well
@Mitch, Thank you and good idea.