Book Your Delta Partner Segments First
In August of 2012 I was messing around on Expert Flyer to see where I could go with the 300,000+ Delta Skymiles I had burning a hole in my account. This was before I even left on my honeymoon in Mauritius, and I was already starting to think about an awesome trip to celebrate our first anniversary the next year. It didn’t take too long to figure out the next target destination, because we had been thinking about going to either Bora Bora or the Cook Islands as alternate honeymoon destinations before arriving at Mauritius. Since Delta has a partnership with Air Tahiti Nui that allows you to redeem Skymiles on their airline, I set my sights on getting some of the elusive business class award space on the airline.
It is known to many frequent flyers that Delta is the best US airline for booking award trips to French Polynesia and Australia because they have partnerships that provide them access to many flights going to these destinations. In the case of French Polynesia (which I use interchangeably with Tahiti), Delta partners with the two airlines that have direct flights from the United States: Air France and Air Tahiti Nui. That meant I had options for flying and what I hoped to be a good chance at success getting these tickets booked.
Using Expert Flyer, I found that there were only a few flights with two Air Tahiti Nui business class seats available in the date range I was seeking. From what I understand, Air Tahiti Nui releases their award ticket space around 330 days before the date of the flight, and it appeared that award flights were being booked quickly. It is also my understanding that the airline only releases 2 seats per flight to Delta, so I really needed to be on the ball to get seats booked on the same flight in business class.
Fortunately I was able to find outbound and return flights from LAX to PPT (Papeete) that were 15 days apart – ideal timing for a two week first anniversary trip. I just had to make sure that Delta would book it for me.
Unlike my other experiences with Delta, the booking was actually fairly painless. I blocked off a 2 hour time period just to be safe and called the Delta Platinum line, asking if I could book flights in business class on one of their partner airlines. I said that it was flight TN-17 on their partner airline Air Tahiti Nui. The phone agent told me that she had just booked one of these flights the other day and that she was jealous of my trip. Within 10 minutes I had my ideal flights booked and showing up in my Delta account. That is an all time first for me!
The coolest part? The exclusivity! If Air Tahiti runs 1 flight per day from LAX-PPT and 2 business class seats are available on that flight, we are among ~700 people who will have that experience this year. Pretty darn cool if you ask me!
Adding Domestic Segments to Delta Partner Award Tickets
Now that we had a flight booked to make it from LAX to French Polynesia, we needed to find a way to get to LAX from our home airport in Minneapolis. I have learned that when booking partner awards on Delta to never include Delta operated flights in your initial booking, otherwise it muddies the waters and you often have to pay significantly more than their award chart states.
For example, if I were to have added the MSP-LAX business class flights to the itinerary at the time, I would have had to pay 190,000 miles instead of the 150,000 miles it costs to fly this route in business class on their award chart. This is because if you book a low level award on one segment (150k sky miles to Tahiti) and a medium or high coach award on another segment (40k miles for high level domestic award), Delta will add the two values together instead of incrementing the difference.
I simply refuse to pay 40k miles for a domestic coach ticket when I’m already giving them 150k miles! That’s robbery.
In order to combat this effect, you need to find a low level domestic ticket (coach or first class, doesn’t really make a difference) in order to keep your miles required the same. This keeps you in compliance with their award chart and prevents you from overpaying. But it usually means that you are not flying at your ideal times, which can be unfortunate.
The good news is that you will often find that flights may go from medium or high level award tickets to low level awards at some point along the way, so if you keep on checking for better flights up until your departure date, you may be able to get better flight times. This doesn’t always work, though, as evidenced by my 7 AM flight this morning to LAX.
My General Rules for Booking a Delta Partner Award Ticket
Always start by booking a partner segment of an itinerary first. Do not add Delta segments at all
Secure your ticket on Delta’s partner airline, hang up and breathe a sigh of relief
Call back and add domestic or international Delta flown segments to your itinerary. Make sure the segments are low level award tickets
Tip: If you are flying business class on a partner, you may have to pay a premium in miles to have a first class segment domestically. Most of the time this will be the case, actually
Find a way to add domestic segments to your Delta ticket without paying anything extra in miles (it will likely cost you $5 per person though). This is nerve wracking, but I know it can be done!
Keep checking to see if the award level for the domestic Delta leg goes down to “Low” status. This does happen some of the time
When all else fails, suck it up and fly your domestic legs in coach
Coming Soon: My Trip Reports from my trip to Paradise including a crazy flight over the South Pacific. I will be visiting the islands of Papeete, Rarotonga, Aitutaki and Moorea and can’t wait to share details on all of them!
Here is a preview of my trip to the South Pacific:
Our Route to the South Pacific
Papeete Photo Credit: Pierre Lesage via Compfight cc
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