Maximizing Delta’s Award Routing Rules

Delta underwent some major changes back in 2014 and 2015. Those included overhauling its entire SkyMiles program by making mileage earning revenue-based, devaluing its award charts and then actually no longer publishing them at all, as well as introducing one-way awards, changing its stopover and open-jaw award pricing and ending round-the-world awards.

Fees

Sure, we talk about award flights as “free” tickets, but in reality, you might find yourself getting hit with all kinds of fees, so it’s best to be prepared. Here’s the page where Delta publishes its award ticket fees.

Telephone booking charge: Delta used to charge you $25-$35 per ticket unless you were a Gold, Platinum or Diamond Medallion. But as I mentioned above, the airline recently said it would waive these fees for all customers. Just note that the fee page still displays the charges, but they should not apply to your bookings.

Award redeposit/reissue: $150 per ticket. Waived for Platinum and Diamond Medallions when using their own miles. Also note that miles for award travel are non-refundable for flights canceled or changed within 72 hours of the original flight departure time, so if you do cancel or change your award, be sure to do it outside that window.

Close-in booking fee: Delta excels in this area since it does not charge close-in booking fees for flights within 21 days, like many of its competitors do. The fact that you don’t have to pay any fees for a last-minute booking is a big plus. Just beware that if you want to cancel your award ticket and get your miles back, you must do so 72 hours or more in advance of travel, or you lose your miles.

Airline Partners

Delta is a member of the SkyTeam alliance, so you can earn and redeem miles on the following airline partners (though now you earn miles to a varying degree based on the carrier and fare class, so be sure to check the rules for any upcoming travel you may have):

• Aeroflot
• Aerolineas Argentinas
• Aeromexico
• Air Europa
• Air France
• Alitalia
• China Airlines
• China Eastern
• China Southern
• Czech Airlines
• Garuda Indonesia
• Kenya Airways
• KLM
• Korean Air
• Middle East Airlines
• Saudia
• Tarom
• Vietnam Airlines
• Xiamen

Here are Delta’s non-alliance partners:

• Alaska
• GOL
• Great Lakes Airlines
• Hawaiian
• Virgin Atlantic
• Virgin Australia
• WestJet

The Award Charts

As I mentioned, Delta no longer publishes its award charts and looks like it will raise some partner awards by unspecified amounts come October 1, 2016. However, you can use this previous post with old charts as a rough guide to the cost of various awards.

Delta’s awards are zone-based. Here are the countries included in each region:

Routing Rules

The SkyMiles program underwent some dramatic updates last year. Here are some of the biggest takeaways.

One Ways, Open Jaws and Stopovers

Last year, Delta basically switched its rules from allowing stopovers and open jaws but not one-way awards to allowing one-ways (which pretty much take the place of open jaws by Delta’s logic) but not stopovers.

First, the negative. Whereas stopovers used to be a great way to explore more than one destination at the price of a single award, now if you have a stop of more than four hours domestically or 24 internationally, you will be charged for two separate awards. So you used to be able to do things like book an award from New York to Paris (stopover), stay a few days and continue on to Istanbul (destination). Then say you wanted to take a cruise from Istanbul to Rome, you could book your return award from Rome (open jaw) to New York.

However, now if you wanted to book the same itinerary, you will now have to book one award from New York to Paris, a separate one from Paris to Istanbul and a third from Rome back to New York, so you’ll end up redeeming more miles.

On the plus side, being able to use Delta SkyMiles to book one-way awards is a fantastic development and one that, in general, makes the currency much more versatile.

Mixed-Level Awards

A mixed-level award is where one leg or segment is priced out at one level, like the Saver level, while another is at a different (higher) level. While partner awards will always price out at the saver level, this situation might arise if you have a round-trip where, say, the outbound segment is at the Saver level and the return is at a higher level.

For example, here’s a round-trip business-class award from Los Angeles to Brisbane for 295,000 miles.

This itinerary includes a Virgin Australia flight on the outbound and then both a Virgin and a Delta flight on the return. If it were a Saver-level award, it would be just 80,000 miles each way, or 160,000 miles round-trip, as you can see if I just take the LA-Brisbane one-way on Virgin Australia.

But it’s that return at a much higher level that’s raising the mileage price — to a jaw-dropping 215,000 miles! While it’s good news on a certain level that Delta will price out mixed awards so you can put everything on one ticket if you’re willing to pay the higher mileage rate, this can also throw your search results out of whack.

In this case, you might want to book each direction one at a time. You could bide your time and just book the outbound while monitoring the prices of returns and hope one of them dropped to the Saver level.

Maximum Permitted Mileage

Like other airlines, Delta has Maximum Permitted Mileage (MPM) amounts for various city pairs. Per its SkyMiles Rules & Conditions specifically, “For international Award Travel, if a published routing does not exist between two cities or service is not offered via a published routing, travel must be within the maximum permitted mileage. Completely open tickets will not be issued.”

That means if there’s not a flight between two cities, you can book multiple segments that route through other airports than your origin and destination, but the entire distance must fall within the airline’s maximum permitted mileage.

Here’s there things get a bit tricky. Delta doesn’t actually publish its maximum permitted mileage numbers between various cities. Instead, however, you can look up MPMs by calling the airline or by subscribing to ExpertFlyer and going to the Travel Information tab and selecting Maximum Permitted Mileage.

Then just enter your city pairs, the airline and a sample date, and the search tool will generate the MPM for you. For example, let’s use New York-JFK to New Delhi (DEL). According to ExpertFlyer, the MPM is 9,543 miles. This is how Delta will determine which flights you can use to get there.

I’ve plotted out a couple plausible routes using GCMap that you might think would work, given Delta’s partners, including via Taipei on Air China, Shanghai on China Eastern, Paris on Air France and Moscow on Aeroflot.

However, only those two routings via Europe fall within the MPM, so your award searches will only turn those up, like this one via Moscow on Aeroflot:

But if we look at the MPM for Los Angeles to Delhi instead, that ends up being 12,031 miles, and opens up a lot more options.

In fact, a quick award search shows flights both via Asia (Shanghai on China Eastern) and Europe (Moscow on Aeroflot). So paying attention to your origin/destination and MPMs can have a big impact on your travel plans.

Those are the major factors when it comes to Delta award routing rules. For more information on SkyMiles and booking awards, check out these posts.

Additionally, if you’re looking to boost your SkyMiles balance, now’s a great time to take advantage of Delta’s current credit card sign-up bonuses. The carrier is offering increased bonuses through July 6 — you can currently earn 50,000 bonus miles after spending $2,000 in the first three months with the Gold Delta SkyMiles Credit Card from American Express, or earn 60,000 bonus miles plus $10,000 MQMs after spending $2,000 in the first three months with the Platinum Delta SkyMiles Credit Card from American Express.

Source: thepointsguy.com