I think this is a major hit to UR with people who want to ur to fly J or F to Asia. I was going to use KE as backup plan in case VS fell through with ANA. I really don't know what secondary option is I guess UA but they increased the RT cost in J up to 180k which i don't really like. I am wondering now if i should start to move my spending over to Amex now instead of primarily chase.
@mongstradamus I agree 100%. The big hit will be J/F redemptions. It's sad to see another SkyTeam partner missing from my available options. FWIW, the best value for Delta award flights flying on DL metal will usually be to transfer to Virgin Atlantic if you're using MRs, URs, TYPs, or Starriott-Carlton Ritzpoints. But of course with the quirky new Air France and KLM awards, you could find yourself flying business class for 60,000 miles or economy for 215,000 miles; it seems to be totally random, so certainly worth checking out FlyingBlue first! Also, for Delta it certainly pays to check out the actual cash price of the flight since you may do better booking it through the UR portal for 1.5 cpp, and you'll earn all of the elite-qualifying goodies as well as SkyMiles.
The last few trips to Asia we did J or F , i don’t want to sound snobbish but i find it difficult to fly economy for a 22+ hour flight. I am not sure at 1.5 cpp i could find anything like i could with KE. KE had a lot more availability than most. I probably would have to bite the bullet and use ual to transfer to either BR or OZ i have done both before in J they are fine. I have almost no TYP, and only about 70k mr so i can’t really do much with those. This is what happens when you put too many eggs in one basket you get burned.
I just have to hope VS will have a lot of ana availability when i try and book a flight early next year for Jan 2020 trip. I have heard it can be quite difficult finding availability for the JFK- NRT/HND flight so i am a bit stressed about that.
@mongstradamus sorry I should have put some space in my reply. The DL part (most of my post) was addressing @UpperNwGuy's question about booking DL flights. I don't think you sound like a snob at all (I wouldn't want to do a trans-Pacific flight from the east coast in Y, either). In most cases I'd certainly say paying for F/J flights through a portal like UR or Amex Travel is a bad use of points. I did do pretty well with a one-way J flight on Aeromexico paying with URs, though.
@K-in-Boston wrote:@mongstradamus sorry I should have put some space in my reply. The DL part (most of my post) was addressing @UpperNwGuy's question about booking DL flights. I don't think you sound like a snob at all (I wouldn't want to do a trans-Pacific flight from the east coast in Y, either). In most cases I'd certainly say paying for F/J flights through a portal like UR or Amex Travel is a bad use of points. I did do pretty well with a one-way J flight on Aeromexico paying with URs, though.
I will just have to see what options are out there. Maybe i will blow all my points if/when SQ releases non stop to Singapore from JFK. It just seems like less options makes me a bit sad.