Delta added an online award calendar back in November (and then of course used it as a fig leaf for the elimination of award charts).

Since then they’ve been adding various airline partners to their online booking functionality like China Southern and China Eastern and Aerolineas Argentinas and Garuda Indonesia as well as China Airlines and Gol.

Now Delta has more updates.

Aeroflot and Vietnam Airlines Added to Online Award Booking

Aeroflot has decent business class award availability for two passengers much of the time and flies from New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and Miami. Their inflight product is better than you think. And their flights are a way to travel beyond Moscow as well, such as to India.

Vietnam Airlines doesn’t have a fantastic inflight product in business (though their new 787s will be far better!) and doesn’t serve the US. They’re a good way to get from Europe to Southeast Asia and to fly around Southeast Asia.

Having these carriers online is a help — I’ve been told more than once when calling Delta that Vietnam Airlines isn’t amember of Skyteam, so not having to first convince an agent that they’re a partner is always a help!

Not all markets are apparently yet loaded, they’re being ‘phased in’ (with no timeframe given by Delta, but I wouldn’t guess it will be long).

Virgin Australia is Still a Partner

When I wrote about the 80% bonus for purchased Virgin America miles, several readers noted they thought it was no longer possible to book Virgin Australia flights using Delta miles — and that there was speculation (fueled by Delta agents, and reported on Flyertalk) that the Delta-Virgin Australia partnership had ended.

While Delta certainly makes changes without notice, that made no sense to me here since Delta and Virgin Australia aren’t just frequent flyer program partners they are ‘joint business venture’ partners with revenue sharing and such a breakup would have been news.

I reached out to Delta on this and indeed it turns out that the inability of Delta to book these awards is being reported as an IT glitch which they say will be fixed (again, no promised timeframe).

More Online Award Booking Coming

They promise two more partner airlines bookable online soon.