For those that are experts in booking awards with Delta miles, you can likely ignore this post. For those that struggle to book awards with Delta miles, there is a simple message in this post: the Delta award calendar sucks. If you are trying to book international awards, you should ignore it or at least realize that what you see is not true.
I was recently looking at flights from Houston to Amsterdam in economy at the low level. I started looking for one-way so I can find the flights I want and then piece them together in the multi-city search. In the starting search, I typed in my departure, arrival, date and checked off the “redeem miles” along with “my dates are flexible.”
Here is what the Delta award calendar showed:
According to this award calendar, there should be no low level awards available, only peak awards. This would actually discourage a person from continuing and instead click on a “saver award” date that they may not even want.
However, I continued clicking through on the “peak award” date that I wanted and on the next page, buried at the bottom of the page found a “saver award.”
So, even though the Delta calendar showed “peak award” on the date that I wanted, when I continued, I actually found a “saver award.” In essence, you can’t trust the stupid Delta calendar.
To avoid this problem, you can use the KLM or Airfrance websites to look for the award. The two airlines share the same frequent flyer program called Flying Blue. You should create frequent flyer account for Flying Blue to be able to check for awards. Once you have that, you can search for your award on KLM or Airfrance.us.
When I searched the same itinerary through Flying Blue, I clearly see that the low level award is available. In fact, there are many dates where low level awards are available, yet Delta calendar shows peak dates.
The untrustable Delta award calendar is part of the reason many people including me hate Delta miles. However, if you know some tips and tricks, you can actually find the ticket you want… sometimes…rarely 🙂 The lesson here is don’t trust the Delta award calendar. Check for award availability through Flying Blue.