Earlier this week I wrote about the lack of a SkyMiles award chart and some of the ways that pricing plays for travelers. Getting all the prices available is no longer really viable in many cases because of the way Delta is constructing its SkyMiles Award rates. And that makes things a bit more opaque for consumers which is rarely a good thing. I don’t have a solution to the problem, necessarily, but I have started in on a project to help make things a bit easier. Or at least a bit more transparent.
No award chart? No problem!
A little effort and a kludgy UI can work wonders for identifying what the various rates are on various routes. In many cases there really is only one rate per cabin, but that’s when partners are operating and there is no end-on-end hijinks at play. And even on some routes where it is all partners there can be multiple prices thanks to mixed-cabin itineraries and such. Understanding all the options is a whole lot of work. Just identifying them is challenging. But I’ve got a new resource operating which should help.
HowManySkyMiles.com
Put in your origin and destination countries and it will dump out a list of some of the SkyMiles award rates I’ve found for such itineraries, just like the example above. It is not a fully populated matrix of every country to every other country, at least not yet, but I’m working on getting more data into the system.
The results shown represent a non-exhaustive list of what you might pay one way for such an award, including both the points and taxes & fees. Here’s what I show as options from the US to France, for example:
There are more options than just what I have in the system right now. Aggregating all the data is not a trivial task. But I’m growing the collection and expect to have many, many more values in the days and weeks to come. In the mean time, snoop around and try to get a feel for what the SkyMiles Award non-Chart looks like today.
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Great work Seth! It’s a shame this is even necessary though. I have had an initial look and checked the chart to various destinations. Looks good so far. Thanks!
Great work, Seth! A real resource, though it is a shame you had to do it.
What would be really great is a grease monkey script to show you what you “should” pay as you search on Delta.com. But this is pretty useful as is.
But what is the amount you “should” pay on any given award? Just the lowest I’ve documented? Considering I know there are a few examples where my data doesn’t even have the lowest possible price that might not be so great.
That said, I almost certainly could create such a browser extension. I’ll think about it.
The browser extension/greasemonkey script is now available: http://blog.wandr.me/2015/05/display-lowest-skymiles-award-rates-in-search-results/.
Enjoy!
Also I suspect Delta won’t like this one little bit.
Great idea! Thx for this — but what does NL/OL/OD, etc. mean?
That is the fare class the first segment of the award found at that price books in to. In some cases it correlates to a “tier” in the award chart which no longer exists. In other cases another segment in the itinerary drives the pricing. Possibly too much information but I’m leaving it in the display for now.
@Seth:Seems Delta is continuously changing the price for short haul. I see the price between sfo-lax is reset to 9500 sky pesos for N class. This was 5000 a few days ago 🙁
Once again brilliant work.
Awesome, thanks for doing this Seth!
Wow, I thought Delta was pretty awful before, but looking at those, I had to ask myself, “Are those REALLY one-way award prices?!?”
United is pretty stingy, too, but dang, those Delta award prices make UA award prices look like veritable bargains. I mean, Delta business class starting at 80K one way?! For comparison, LAX-NRT (a reasonably comparable distance w/ LAX-CDG)… in an SQ *SUITE* starts at *74K*.
1. The chart shows 80,000 miles for US to France in Business Class, but I find one way awards for 62,500 miles. What is the actual amount for the lowest level?
2. Could you display the award charts, or at least the one for the lowest level award in each class?
Thanks very much.
1) As noted on the site, there may be higher or lower rates than the ones I’ve identified so far. I’m processing a ton of searches and data but I can only show the rates which I’ve found in the system based on the routes and dates I’ve searched. I’m continuing to add more but there will be some I’m missing.
2) There is no chart to show other than what I’ve built. Delta doesn’t publish numbers for what is lowest so the best I can do is collect a ton of data and display what I have found. It is not complete and may never be complete but it is way better than the nothing which was otherwise out there.