Delta Air Lines is offering generous business class saver award availability on its New York JFK – Zurich flight in November. This was first spotted by Thrifty Traveler‘s premium airfare deal alert service.

Here’s availability for four passengers using 50,000 Virgin Atlantic miles apiece to take this Delta flight:

Virgin will generally let you put awards on hold for 24 hours when you reserve by phone, and American Express, Chase, Citi, Capital One and Bilt all partner with Virgin for transfers.

While the award space is worth passing along in its own right, it’s another example of how Delta SkyMiles sticks it to its own members.

• These are Delta flights
  
• Available as saver awards in business class
  
• Virgin Atlantic charges 50,000 miles per passenger
  
• While Delta charges as much as 360,000 miles per passenger

In fact the lowest price Delta gets for saver award space is still about 5 times as much as Virgin does. Remember these are Delta flights with the cheapest inventory available.

Let’s not forget that the Vice President in charge of Delta SkyMiles says they don’t even need to try to offer strong redemption value (“we are not necessarily trying to play the game with customers”) customers keep earning miles and taking their credit card even though they intentionally offer poor value to members.