Well it looks like I will have to earn more miles to travel to the places that I want. Delta just introduced a 3-tier system which basically means the “cheap” milage tickets are going to be even harder to get. Add in the $50 fuel surcharge and other fees and its as good as it used to be.
That said I am still better off than paying for the flights outright. Especially in the case of an around-the-world ticket where it only costs me 140,000 miles for 1 ticket. I am not sure what the taxes would add up to be but it will still be way under the US$ 2988 that I paid last time around.
For the short run this hurts a little since I have limited vacation time and less flexibility on booking these award tickets. I am hoping that with the pending Nothwest merger their will be more flights across the board to choose from and it will ease things for me.
The next item that devalues them is the ticketing charge for an airline that is part of the Skyteam alliance. If I fly on Air France, for example, it will cost me $25 per ticket (meaning $50 round trip) since I am not flying on Delta metal. I can see why they do it but it does not mean I like it.
All in all the miles still siginificantly help me in my travel aspirations for the future. I just wish they would stop eroding the financial gain with more and more fees.