My Experience in Booking Summer SkySaver Seats to Europe

2 days ago, I was able to snag 2 SkySaver Frequent Flyer award tickets (coach) for our Venice-Barcelona Med cruise in early Jun/late Jul 2007. Our Delta flights ended up being ORD-ATL-VCE (Wed Jun 14) and BCN-JFK-ORD (Tue Jul 3) with a very convenient schedule. We do not have any special frequent flyer status with Delta as we have flown them only occasionally. Needless to say, I am happy that we were able to do this without having to pay double miles for the more expensive SkyChoice FF award tickets which is what I thought we would have to do for Europe during the summer. Since we only had 100,000 pts, it would have otherwise meant that we would only get 1 FF ticket instead of 2.

Here are some of things that I did in case it is of any help to anyone (many have been mentioned before on this board):

1. I found the flyertalk.com forum very very valuable on how to book FF tickets and keeping up with changes with their program. In particular, I found this extremely informative sticky on booking Delta FF tickets to Europe: How to book a Skyteam Award with Skymiles

2. I booked my flights 330 days in advance--calling at midnight ET. I ended up booking the Venice flight first. I then waited until the 330 day window opened up to book our return flight from Barcelona. This meant that I had to be ticketed after I booked the Venice flight and be subject to redeposit fees if I could not find any SkySaver FF seats out of Barcelona. Delta used to allow you a 2 week courtesy hold which helps in this situation but seveal months ago, it has been reduced to 48 hr which is of no help.

3. I began my Delta website search for SkySaver seats 345 days in advance of my target dates. As each successive day first opened up for booking (midnight ET), I looked at the Delta website to see what was available FF-wise. This gave me a feel for what I would see when the 330 day window rolled around to my target dates. For those 2 weeks, I saw that Venice seemed to have alot of SkySaver seats and options on Tue/Wed and none for Fri which was my 1st choice. Sadly, I never saw any Skysaver seats available out of Barcelona for any date.

4. I adjusted my date for the outbound flight by flying in one day earlier than I had planned. I originally wanted to stay in Venice for 2 nts before our cruise which meant flying out on Fri. But because of my research from #3, I went ahead and booked 2 SkySaver seats for Thu the moment they were available for booking (called at midnight ET). I called 24 hrs later hoping to get 2 SkySaver seats for Fri but none were available (as I had suspected from #3) but I wait listed for the Fri flights which by the way nothing has freed up yet to this day.

5. I found that it was more effective to call Delta than to use their website for booking these SkySaver seats, even though it cost me $10 per ticket. The phone reps have access to seats on their award partners which you cannot see on the website. I used the general SkyMiles phone number and went thru the International option. I believe that I ended up calling the SkyMiles desk a total of 5 times to nail down the entire booking. Every rep on each call was very courteous, patient, and helpful. When I called at midnight on the 330th day to book the Barcelona return leg for Jul 2, there were no SkySaver award seats available on Delta's website (which was expected). However the Delta rep on the phone said that she could get me 2 SkySaver seats on Alitalia with one connection through Milan (MXP). Terrific! Because the flight left BCN at 6:50am, I told her that I wanted to hold those seats and call back 24 hrs later to see if SkySaver seats were available on Alitalia for the following day (if I am going to leave that early, I wanted to add an extra night in Barcelona). On her own initiative, the Delta rep looked in her system anyway and found that 2 SkySaver seats were available on Alitalia for Jul 3rd for those same flights! Because I needed time to think about whether I really want to extend my Barcelona stay by a night, I had her hold the Jul 3rd flights for me as I would call the next day to make a final decision. When I called the next day with the intention of accepting the Jul 3 Alitalia flights, the Delta rep said that something was "wrong" with my reservations. The transatlantic flight to Venice got moved back by 2 hrs and that I would now have an 8 hr layover in ATL. On top of that there was something wrong with the Alitalia flights which she tried to explain to me twice but I did not understand it (that was a problem with me, not her). She ended up rebooking our ORD-ATL flight to a much more convenient time (it left later in the day with a shorter layover) and she moved our SkySaver Award seats on Alitalia over to a more convenient pair of Delta flights. Needless to say I was stunned but thrilled because there were no SkySaver Award seats originally available on any of the rebooked Delta flights.

I will have to buy 2 tickets out right since there are 4 of us going on this cruise, but now that the FF tickets are all on Delta, it will be a more economical task.

Knowledge, flexibility, planning, patience. All the ingredients to get the best possible results.

I tip my hat to you. And also for a very informative post.

Thank you so much for your post. I am flying round trip to Barcelona next year and want to use miles as well! Your information is so helpful, that I've now made all my notes and calculated the exact dates that I will use to try to get the miles at a skysaver rate.

joelmarj, I am so glad that you found the info helpful.

A few additonal learnings--at least for me--since then:

6. I converted Marriott Reward Points to SkyMiles to help get a 3rd ticket. I have never paid any attention to this option until now (Convert Partner Points to SkyMiles). After spending 100,000 SkyMiles for the 2 Europe coach tickets against my account, I took a harder look at my wife's account which had 40,000 Skymiles--only 10,000 miles short of a 3rd ticket. After reading the Flyertalk.com forum, I found out that I could convert 30,000 Marriott Rewards points into 10,000 SkyMiles (we have quite a few MR points although I don't like losing points in the conversion). I then called Delta and put a hold on a SkySaver award seat which is good for 2 days (see #7). I called the Marriott Rewards desk to have the conversion done. Although the conversion usually takes place in a couple of business days, Marriott said that they guarantee the conversion to be done in 7 days (or something like that). I paid the $15 expedite charge which guaranteed the points to show up in my wife's SkyMiles account in 2 days (it showed up the next business day). Not knowing in advance that I could convert points over to SkyMiles prevented me from getting all 3 FF tickets on the same flights, darn.

7. Be sure to talk to the International Partners desk at Delta. After realizing that I had enough SkyMiles thru my wife's account to get a 3rd FF ticket, I called the Delta International Partners desk (take the "reservation representative" option, then "international travel" option, then "redeeming SkyMiles" option, and then "partner airlines" option). This call took place approximately 320 days in advance of the return flight and 302 days in advance of the outbound flight. The partners desk can see SkySaver seat availability for Delta and their air partners. They told me that there were no Delta SkySaver award seats available for my dates of interest but they could get me on ORD-MXP-VCE outbound via Alitalia and and a return composed of BCN-AMS-ATL (on KLM) and ATL-ORD (Delta). I put a 2 day hold on this to wait for the Marriott Reward points to convert over. The next day the points showed up in my wife's account and I called Delta back. I asked if an Alitalia return flight was available. The Delta rep found a SkySaver seat on a BCN-MXP-ORD pair of flights which I took--making my wife's itinerary all Alitalia. I asked if the two Delta FF tickets could be moved over to Alitalia so that the 3 of us could fly together--it was not available.

8. Watch for the scheduling of seasonal flights. From what I have read, Delta normally offers JFK-BCN service year round and then ATL-BCN service during the summer. When I booked our flights, ATL-BCN service was not loaded yet for 2007. After checking Delta's website daily for around 3 weeks, the ATL-BCN and BCN-ATL flights were finally loaded into the reservation system. I called to move my wife over to a SkySaver seat on a Delta BCN-ATL flight but none were available so I wait listed her. 1 week later, I saw on Delta.com that SkySaver seats had opened up on our flight so I called and managed to get my wife's Alitalia return flight switched over to BCN-ATL-ORD on Delta. I also got the 2 Delta FF tickets that I had booked earlier moved over to BCN-ATL-ORD (those 2 tickets were BNC-JFK-ORD) so now we all fly home together!

Thank you so much for your post. I am flying round trip to Barcelona next year and want to use miles as well! Your information is so helpful, that I've now made all my notes and calculated the exact dates that I will use to try to get the miles at a skysaver rate.

Hi Marj,

Two pieces of advice on Barcelona. First, don't use Iberia Airlines under any circumstances. Secondly, at the airport before you leave the U.S., get them to give you your seat assignments and boarding passes for the return trip.

You know how even tempered Mike and I are. From Barcelona we had to take a commuter plane to Madrid to connect with our transAtlantic flight. In Madrid was the only time in my life that I ever felt like just sitting on the floor in the middle of the airport and pitching a kicking, screaming temper tantrum. I did end up crying because we couldn't get anyone to help straighten out a screw up that Barcelona caused. Never, ever again will I fly Iberia; and I hope I never have to see Madrid or Barcelona again!!!!