Over the past few years, Delta SkyMiles has been evolving into one of the least transparent frequent flyer programs out there. This really started back in early 2015, when they eliminated SkyMiles award charts. The underlying motivation here is that Delta wants to turn SkyMiles into a revenue based frequent flyer program as much as…
Continue reading: Delta SkyMiles Now Blocks Last Minute Partner Awards
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Speaking of Skyteam's partner award availability, I have an interesting experience recently when I was trying to book an Aeroflot award using Delta skymiles.
I am trying to book LHR-SVO-TLV operated by Aeroflot, and I can see award space on expertflyer and Aeroflot's own website. However, neither Delta.com nor the phone agents can see the award space. I phoned up Aeroflot and the agent said there is award space available and it should be open for partner award bookings. However, I later tried to phone up Korean Air and Flying Blue, neither of them can see the award space.
Similar situation exists on some other mid-haul and long-haul Aeroflot flights, for example, SVO-PEK and SVO-JFK. Only a very small subset of the award space is viewable by partners. So my guess is that Aeroflot started to block most partner bookings although the Aeroflot agent denied.
Is this a system glitch among Skyteam partners ? Or is Aeroflot really blocking partner award bookings?
@Stanley I booked 2 Aeroflot awards using Skymiles in the last month. One was IAD-SVO and another was SVO-LHR. Both in business.
@Jim Yes I think the availability was normal last month. But I cannot find any viable options recently.
Is it a coincidence that Alaska just started doing the same thing with a couple of their Asian partners as well?
BA have done this for months with Cathay - very high rate of fraud and lots of mileage brokers. Particularly on routes like HKG-TPE which are extremely expensive last minute but just a few Avios
Long thread on Flyertalk about it
They will definitely use the fraud excuse. The real excuse is that they think people are booking with miles for essential trips that they would be willing to pay cash for if miles were not available.
If fraud is a real thing, they should come up with a rule that within the final 14 days, you can only book flights for people in your household or something like that.
This is not a glitch. It’s been this way for at least a year, and it only affects flights departing mainland China. To Delta’s defense, it had to be done to combat the nasty fraud and miles selling that is becoming normal here in mainland China. This was mentioned on another blog (I think LoyaltyLobby) when it first began. It’s the same reason that BA blocks CX last minute redemptions departing China.
DAL is an unregulated monopoly.
Ma-Bell II aka AT&T should have bought THEM instead of stupid little satellite co.
They could own and control everything.