10 days ago Delta devalued its SkyMiles loyalty program further by raising the price of partner awards without notice. But it left an odd loophole that could be used to book awards at the old price. That loophole is now closed.
The proposition was simple: add a Delta segment to any partner award and the new higher price did not apply.
For example:
- Los Angeles (LAX) to Taipei (TPE) on China Airlines = 95K miles in business class
- San Francisco (SFO) to LAX on Delta + LAX to TPE on China Airlines = 80K miles in business class
or
- JFK to London (LHR) on Virgin American = 85K miles in business class
- Boston (BOS) to JFK on Delta + JFK to LHR (SVO) on Virgin Atlantic = 70K miles in business class
Not surprisingly, that loophole made no sense and has been corrected. Try to replicate that and you get the new higher pricing–
or
Short Segments on Partners Not Increasing Price
If there is any silver lining to this, it is that the changes could have been even worse. For example, adding an intra-region connecting flight on a partner does not jack up the award price if the overwater segment is on Delta.
For example, fly Delta to Amsterdam than KLM to London and you’ll still pay 70K for a low-level award:
Fly Delta to Shanghai and connect on China Eastern to Bangkok and you’ll pay 80K (the old price) and not the new 95K partner award price.
So at least there is that.
CONCLUSION
Is it any surprise that Delta can quickly clean up customer-friendly website glitches but when it comes to customer-friendly moves its like Waiting for Godot…?
Well, thanks for letting us know in the first place.
“It is any surprise that Delta …”
should read “Is it…..”
bummed about the loophole closure!
Delta used to price awards at “saver” level when the transatlantic/pacific segment was on a partner. It was the single saving grace of the program. I live in the middle of IL. So I have to fly a commuter to go anywhere. I could use Delta awards if booked far enough in advance for much less than UA or AA. This feature actually changed quite awhile ago. Now I drive to ORD and just take the partners flights. This works quite well, as I usually get non-stops for our destination. Delta also does another trick, that I recommend to your readers to watch their reservations. Gary Leff calls it “gardening your reservations”. Delta if they fly the same route as your award but your award is on partner, Delta will, without notice, change all your flights to Delta flights. One trip, I had the Air France segment changed twice. I had to call Delta res people, to change it back. I would call Air France and ask them what was wrong. Both times AF told me that DL cancelled the segment. Since using ORD as my origin, DL can’t change the flights as Delta has only one transatlantic to Paris.
Do you ever consider using grammar and spellcheck on your posts? You might want to think about doing that.
“Then” and “than” are two different words, each with with different spelling and different meaning,