Delta Rolls Back New Award Restriction… Again

By: Ben Schlappig

Published: March 21, 2018

16 comments

Yesterday I posted about how Delta quietly updated the terms & conditions of the SkyMiles program to add the following restriction:

Award Tickets that do not originate or end in the United States or Canada have a three-day advance purchase requirement. This includes routes like Paris (CDG) connecting through New York City (JFK) to Sao Paulo (GRU), or Shanghai (PVG) to/from Tokyo (NRT). No Exceptions. The advanced purchase applies to all Award bookings in the affected markets.

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As you can see, with this change all award tickets not originating or ending in the United States or Canada had a three day advance purchase requirement.

This was in addition to Delta SkyMiles recently expanding a rule requiring in-person ticketing for certain types of awards. Delta SkyMiles awards issued within 72 hours of departure for travel originating in China, Russia, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Brazil, and any country in Africa, must be booked in-person at the airport.

View from the Wing now reports that Delta claims this was a mistake, and they’ve updated their terms & conditions to undo this. Now the terms once again say the following:

Award Tickets purchased for travel within or originating in China, Russia, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Brazil and any country in Africa require a 72-hour advance purchase. Members desiring travel within or originating in these markets within 72 hours must go to the airport to purchase their ticket, including reissues. No Exceptions. The advanced purchase applies to all Award bookings in the affected markets.

So the same restriction that was added earlier this year applies, but nothing new has been added.

This further illustrated the problem with Delta SkyMiles’ lack of transparency. I trust that other programs, like American AAdvantage, would provide notice of any major changes to the program. That’s not the case at Delta SkyMiles, though. They don’t have award charts, and don’t publish extensive rules regarding what type of award tickets you can book. As a result, both members and reservations agents are left in the dark, and just have to work with what the computer allows.

This isn’t the first time that Delta has changed rules or award prices only to roll them back the next day, only to claim they’re an error. All that would be fine if they were transparent and we didn’t have to assume that whatever appears is correct, but that’s what we’re left with, unfortunately. It has gotten to the point where we’re unfazed by these types of situations.

I’m also not sure how the terms & conditions of a program “accidentally” get updated?

Still, in this case I guess it’s good news that this further restriction hasn’t been added.

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Ron Member

March 23, 2018, 10:12 am

@Andy 11235: you're absolutely right. Not only Delta bans partner award booking inside the 3 day window for flights not originating or terminating in North America, but Delta also bans its own intra Asia flights! I always get an error message when searching SIN-NRT or PEK-NRT for flights on March 23, 24, and 25 BUT was presented with plenty of options for March 26. Turns out DL blocks ALL award tickets within 3 days of departure for flights originating in the restricted countries; except for flights ending in North America.

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AlexS Diamond

March 23, 2018, 12:36 am

I still wonder how a large corporation "accidentally" "makes mistakes" like this. Our websites are pretty much run by our legal department. They're the one which comes up with the verbiage, content, timing, approval, etc.

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TProphet Platinum

March 22, 2018, 5:51 pm

Although I recently researched and wrote a pretty comprehensive article about loyalty fraud and what airlines are doing to stop it (it's here: https://www.seat31b.com/2018/01/how-to-avoid-being-flagged-for-loyalty-fraud-in-2018/), I think there is a major gap the airlines aren't accounting for. None of these restrictions make any sense to me when the account holder is traveling, and these restrictions are creeping across airlines (BA and Alaska impose similar restrictions). It's totally understandable that airlines would want to limit redemptions for third parties, because this is how most fraud happens. Suppose you are booking a ticket for someone completely unrelated and with whom you've never traveled, it's one way, the flight leaves today, the card being used to pay the taxes isn't in the name of the account holder, and the destination is Lagos. Well, if that doesn't throw off every red flag under the sun, the airline isn't doing its job. However, if I need to use my miles to fly somewhere on short notice, and I'm the person traveling (with taxes paid using my own credit card which the airline already has on file), that's a whole lot less suspicious. I realize there is a loophole in some reservations systems where a name change fee could theoretically be paid at the airport, but clearly flagging the PNR should prevent this from happening.

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Andy 11235 Platinum

March 22, 2018, 10:49 am

@Ron I'm pretty sure delta blocks partner award travel within 72 hours, so you wouldn't actually be able to redeem last-minute from an airport delta doesn't serve in those regions.

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RF Diamond

March 22, 2018, 10:19 am

The only reason they rolled it back is because of the outrage. Keep calling them out on their BS

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