Want to redeem SkyMiles for a premium cabintrip to Asia using the lowest level of Delta SkyMiles? I highly recommend starting the search in Seattle. One of the side effects of the relatively new service increase is that the award inventory – in most cases – is still quite generous while the carrier works to fill the planes up with higher yielding revenue passengers. There are five options going West out of Seattle on Delta and most of them are showing reasonably generous availability for the cheapest business class awards.
Here are the charts showing the options.
Hong Kong
Tokyo Narita
Shanghai
Beijing
Seoul Incheon
Hong Kong is, by far, the hardest destination of the five to get at the lowest level but even there a smattering of dates show up. Shanghai is the second hardest, with a lot of dates offering only the 2nd highest rate (137,500 versus the low of 70,000) though the 70,000 and 90,000 dates are there. Tokyo Narita is the longest established market for Delta out of Seattle and the award inventory reflects that; the 70k seats exist but not incredibly often. And, if you’ve got the flexibility, Seoul and Beijing have an impressive number of dates with business class seats at the low level.
It is interesting to see that low level economy awards are less prevalent in most cases than low level business class awards. I think that speaks to the ability to sell the coach seats a bit more easily or to better absorb low fares there without disrupting the overall flight profitability curve the way discounting premium fares would.
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How do I generate these charts?
Making the charts is easy. Getting all the data is the hard part. 🙂
I use a proprietary data aggregation method to get the information. And that’s not something I’m sharing publicly.
Another good post, thanks for the info Seth. One question though, is this for 1 or 2 seats? If only 1, perhaps you could share data for 2 people traveling together? Thanks again!
Delta truly sucks for last minute- as in, not existent saver level. odd, as that is the best time with other carriers. i can only hope UA doesn’t copy that!