For many years Delta hasn’t offered international first class awards using SkyMiles. Delta has business class on their planes, not first class, and you can use their miles for business class on their partners — not first class.

As a result SkyMiles members are shut out of Korean Air first class. They’re shut out of Saudia first class. (Air France first class is only available to Air France’s own elite members.) For the most part you cannot use Delta miles for first class on China Southern or China Eastern. Except..

• A couple of weeks ago I noted that domestic segments within China that offer 3-cabins book into first class when you’re on a business class award. So Beijing – Guangzhou on China Southern can be booked in 3-cabin first class.

• A couple of days ago I noted that Delta.com was offering China Eastern long haul first class awards when first was available but business was not on the same flight. The site showed business class mileage for the award even! I noted that the real question was whether it would ticket.

Delta says the price is the price, they do not have award charts. Whatever they show you as award flights available are what they intend to offer, and the price they quote is what they intend to charge. Usually that works against the customer. Here’s a corner case where the opposite seems to be true.

Point Me to the Plane reports on a successful booking of China Eastern first class suites for 170,000 miles (apparently one way, which is double the cost of business).

You can search China Eastern first, business, and economy award space at Expertflyer. You can also search on Korean Air’s website (they stopped offering China Southern long haul first class last fall but still offer China Eastern first class awards). On dates where first class (‘A’ class) is available but business (‘O’ class) is not you should see first class offered at Delta.com when searching for DeltaOne (business).

China Eastern flies Shanghai – New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco (they also serve Honolulu, but with equipment that lacks a first class cabin). Beyond Shanghai of course you can connect to myriad destinations.

Delta of course owns a piece of China Eastern, so I choose to believe this is intentional, making that airline’s best product available for redemption by SkyMiles members.

It’s lovely to imagine, if only for a brief second, SkyMiles becoming valuable for premium international experiences at reasonable prices — on China Eastern as well as partners like Korean and Garuda Indonesia and even Air France.