My mother got her DL miles (finally) from flying her group tour trip to Italy. Last year group trips would not allow for miles gains, according to DL , but this time she got them. She has nearly 9k now. We will idne for the rest and she will use these to fly to see my brother who lives in Houston which is a hub for CO.
She will use DL to fly CO and I think you can do miles+ money flights on CO, but do not know. I know NWA lets you do them, and maybe DL?
You can use DL to fly the other partners but yeah, it is a matter of inventory and each airline's award inventory is different. Sometimes you will find flights avail going thru one airline that are not avail on the other's. So it may be ok to have miles in two accounts (like if you happened to have 25k on CO and 25k on DL) so that you can get at least one ticket. But sometimes that's a pain too and you wish they would just let you fly!
I found out for example that during this particular period, Alaska Airlines miles will not allow for CO flights to and from certain parts of Europe. You can see the itins and the CSRs even try to book one for you but then it says it is currently blacked out. So much for web bookings! So some partners do it differently and as long as you know this, you should be OK. It will just take more creative work. Call first and try to fly thru connecting airports, non standard places to connect thru, and in of one airport and out of another, etc. They can then usually find SOMETHING for you on the phone if you get a freindly and willing enough CSR and you are both willing to spend some time at it. But if you happen to find one of those flights that uses some little airline that happens to be partners with one of the airlines you are flying, it does not necessarily mean you can use the miles from yet another partner to fly them. FOr example, I think you would have problems flying Us airways partner Air Wisconsin when using a United award. It would have had to be all US air flights... Something like that... just keep it in mind when flying partners with multiple airlines.
:)MM
