Questions and Answers

I have an award trip booked via DL on DL metal from DTW. I’ll be starting from BWI, so have a separate WN ticket BWI-DTW — I know this provides me (essentially) no protection in the case of irregular ops. Delta has some shockingly reasonable fares from BWI-DTW, so I am thinking of booking a paid ticket to connect to my award itinerary, but haven’t been able to find any useful info about whether I’m protected in that case. Does anyone have any experience, or can point me at some published info on this?

To summarize: am I protected in irregular ops connecting from a DL-issued/DL-metal revenue ticket to a DL-issued/DL-metal award ticket? Thanks!

Technically no, however in practice you have a much higher chance of accommodation if you are traveling with the same airline.

Thanks for the reply!
You say “technically”, implying that this might be published somewhere — can you point me at that? AA/OW for example are always very clear about this, but I’ve had trouble getting an authoritative answer about DL.

Technically means that airlines are only obligated to provide you transportation from and to the points on your ticket and their fine print contains exclusions about time, delays etc. They are not responsible for anything else. When you travel on two tickets you run the risk of trouble if you don’t make your connections.