Delta now allows one-way awards.

And they have a new, really useful award booking tool on their website.

One thing about that new award calendar that struck me as disingenuous when it lost, is that it gave you the option to search Delta flights only or Delta & all partner airlines when the website certainly did not search and display availability on all of their partners. (The website language no longer uses the word ‘all’.)

But the website has now expanded the range of partners that it will search and display!

Ami L. flagged for me that China Southern and China Eastern are now bookable on Delta’s website. And that’s really valuable.

Here’s the award calendar showing one-way non-stop availability in business class, New York JFK – Guangzhou.

Which brings up availability on the China Southern non-stop flight:

You’ll notice that Delta adds fuel surcharges to China Southern awards. They add those to a subset of their partners, in addition to awards which originate in Europe regardless of carrier.

Here’s an award calendar search showing one-way non-stpo availability in business class New York JFK – Shanghai.

Which brings up availability on the China Eastern non-stop flight.

Delta adds fuel surcharges onto China Eastern awards as well.

• China Eastern flies New York JFK, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, Honolulu – Shanghai.
  
• China Southern flies New York JFK and Los Angeles – Guangzhou and San Francisco – Wuhan.
  
• Both airlines are going to offer onward connecting flights to a variety of destinations in Asia Pacific, even Australia.

These two airlines are additions to existing support for Air France, KLM, Alaska, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Australia, Alitalia, Aeromexico, and Korean Air.

This is an exciting development, but it shouldn’t be overstated. There are still plenty of partners that Delta’s website doesn’t support, and Delta’s telephone agents usually don’t even know who their partners are which makes booking on them frustrating.

United and Alaska both offer a far greater percentage of their partners online as well.

But Delta deserves kudos for making improvements to their award booking process, and Skymiles members will find an easier time using their miles to Asia with these two new partners added to the website.

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