Delta SkyMiles--Far Fewer Flights than If You Using Cash

While I really don’t have any experience with Delta, I can say this is a fairly typical issue for most airline frequent flier programs. In addition, for frequent flier tickets people often look for them as soon as they are available for their routing and date. Often the best flights are snapped up right away. 6 months out you may just be seeing what is left, not necessarily what was originally on offer.

I do hope that you resolve this to your satisfaction. Changing variable such as city pairs or dates may help.

I have used Delta Sky Miles for the past 25 years and it always seems that they relish throwing annoying roadblocks into miles redemption. Just because a flight exists never means that it might have seats available as a reward. The result is inconvenience and sometimes extraordinarily long layovers. On the plus side, I pay a fee for the Amex Sky Miles card. The benefit is you get a substantial discount on the miles needed for a rewards ticket if all flights are on Delta. I earn my miles on a separate AMEX card which allows me to transfer miles to a number of airlines including Delta. When getting the Delta ticket, I simply transfer the miles from one card to the other. Periodically, some of the other AMEX partner airlines offer bonuses on transfers.

My largest resentment toward Delta is around 2006, they offered a 25% bonus for the transfer of any AMEX miles from Amex to Delta. Great deal. A few months later, Delta revised their rewards program doubling the number of Sky Miles needed to purchase a ticket. How underhanded can you get? Oh wait. It’s an airline. What do you expect?

So on the flights you like who is actually flying the plane? If it's not Delta metal your problem may be that the other carriers have not released flights to Delta. My experience is they will give you all their options but you may not like the pricing!

We got a great deal a few years ago, Minneapolis to Bordeaux, France. However the itinerary was terrible. On the way home, we flew Bordeaux to Paris to Seattle to Minneapolis. It was a code share with AirFrance. And the last time I've accepted an AirFrance codeshare.

I can be super flexible now, so I feel like I get great value with the skymiles. I use the flexible dates options to find a good window for travel dates. I have found that the nonstops are expensive with dollars and skymiles, and to Europe it seems like the codeshares (which I like to avoid) are most often the less expensive flights for the skymiles.

Very occasionally, I'll call Delta to make sure I'm seeing all of the flights available. There are many things I don't like about Delta, but their customer service is quite good. You just may have to sit on hold for a bit.

Delta.com is a breeze compared to britishairways.com, recent experience with points redemption on both. At least what shows on Delta.com is bookable, BA is filled with phantom flights not bookable. Also a pet peeve is that on ba.com, they shift the labels on the calendar to start the weeks on Sundays for Americans, but the underlying links are not changed. So booking May 23 you have to search for May 22 (to get results for May 23).