Here’s the Workaround to Find Award Space on Delta’s Website

by Gary Leff

Becky at Book Your Award emailed early this morning about an issue and workaround searching for award space with Delta SkyMiles.

  • Partner awards simply do not show up at Delta.com right now when you search one-way.

  • They do show up if you search round trip.

  • If you want to actually book a one-way, you need to call. The space is there and should price out correctly.

  • This is super annoying because it’s generally best to find space initially by searching one way. It’s also how tools like Award Nexus and KVS Tool search Delta space, rendering those tools useless for Delta partner awards right now.

Here’s a search for Los Angeles – Sydney business class awards (one passenger, seat to include Delta and partners). Only Delta space comes up and the lowest one-way price for Delta metal is displayed.

Now here’s a search for Los Angeles – Sydney business class awards, adding in a return date way off into the future. Delta and partners come up and the lowest roundtrip price is displayed. Where 160,000 is shown that means the outbound costs 80,000 — saver award space on their partner.

Here’s a China Southern award which didn’t display as available when searching one way:

This issue appears to affect all Delta partners. It has to be a glitch rather than intentional, even accounting for the underhanded things Delta has been known to do with SkyMiles.

Both One Mile at a Time and MileValue comment on this issue as well.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  4. “Both One Mile at a Time and MileValue comment on this issue as well.”

    I think that covers it, Alex. Criticize substantial issues please

  5. Gary, are you able to see AS award space? Been looking at dates that were available a few days ago, and not seeing any, even searching for round-trips, and even when space is available via AA.

  6. I noticed that no Korean Air flights are showing up online, even on a round trip. I called Delta and they simply said there were no awards for months! Anyone else have this issue?

  7. Why doesn’t delta just go ahead and admit that they are shutting down their frequent flyer program? That’s what they are doing with all of the changes they are making and forcing their customer to use exorbitant amounts of miles to fly “free”. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

  8. Huh? Two weeks ago I found one-way mixed-class Hanoi to Washington DC for 70K via a Delta on-line search. OK, it did take about two hours of fiddling with layover times, and a separate search for the Seattle to DCA segment. And no, I couldn’t actually book it on-line, nor were the first two Delta reps I got when I called to book willing to believe that it could be done, but my third call yielded a rep with some imagination who plugged in the dates, carriers, class of service and flights and actually said “you go girl” when the itinerary worked.

    For 70K, I have Hanoi to Seoul (business) on VIETNAM AIR, Seoul to Seattle (business) on DELTA, and Seattle to Washington DC (coach) on ALASKA. So apparently it is doable some of the time.

  9. Had to call in twice to book a one-way flight on miles on Aerolinas Argentinas in December. First agent couldn’t even find the one-way flight on her end, and said that I need to book a round trip like the web site says. Proposed I could just not fly the return (but still pay for it). I said I had never heard of such a rule, and she said “well, it’s new”. The second agent easily found the one-way flight, waived the phone fee, and said he would escalate the issue because people have been calling.

  10. Tried 5 different agents with no luck. Only one agent could see the ticket based on round trip, but she told me that it shows a date out of range error when changing to one-way redemption.

  11. This tip may work for finding some partner awards, but it didn’t for me. No KLM award seats on the DFW-AMS nonstop showed up on Delta’s website (I searched for round trip awards for several different time frames later this fall and next spring). But they were easily found for those dates through the Air France Flying Blue site.

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