I am finally able to breathe a sigh of relief after I was able to piece together our Italy trip that looked dire heading into last weekend.  My wife Ashlee‘s lack of work vacation days put us in a pinch to find award availability within a tight window.  With the knowledge I’ve gained from Richard Kerr, founder of the Award Travel 101 Facebook Group, and experience from this weekend, I want to share what I’ve learned.

When I booked our original itinerary in December, I transferred 160,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points to Korean Air (one of Chase’s airline partners) and received 160,000 Korean Air miles (1:1 transfer ratio).  With 160,000 (80,000 Korean Air miles x 2 passengers) Korean Air miles, I booked two round-trip Delta One (business class) flights from New York (JFK) to Venice (VCE) and from Rome (FCO) to Detroit (DTW).  I paid $408.39/ticket in taxes and fees.

The reason I was able to book a Delta Airlines flight with Korean Air miles is because of airline alliances.  Delta and Korean are both in the SkyTeam alliance.  This means that if you have airline miles with one airline in the alliance, you can fly any airline in that same alliance (ie. Delta flight using Korean Air miles).  Korean Air has a competitive business class point redemption shown on their Skyteam North American Award Chart, so I knew we would be in for an incredible experience.

Delta

As I mentioned, I booked round-trip non-stop Delta One business class flights to/from the US and Italy.  The trip was looking great until we came to the realization she did not have enough vacation days for our original itinerary.  So Friday I hopped on to Expert Flyer to track down business class availability for flights that would work.  Once I had flight information for all of the flights written down, I called Korean Air.

Fast forward an hour and 20 minutes later, and the Korean Air agent was finally able to find an economy flight on one of the dates I located on Expert Flyer.  The friendly agent updated our JFK to Venice business class flight to an economy flight on a new date (no business class award availability for our route in April).  At this point, I assumed we simply needed to book a connecting departure flight from DC to JFK and a connecting return flight from Detroit to DC to get us home.

I first used Google Flights to get a handle on potential award flights that would work with our departure time at JFK and arrival time at Detroit.  Delta had the best flights based on our flight times.  Next, I went to delta.com to see both how many points and the cash price Delta was charging for these short-haul flights.  I opted to pay cash, instead of transferring Starwood Preferred Guest points to Delta (Delta is a SPG airline partner), as the DCA to JFK flight was ~$75 and the DTW to DCA flight was ~$125.  I booked two flights at $200/person and called it a day.

Korean Air SkyTeam Rules

As I’ve made my way through the Korean Air SkyTeam process, I thought it’d be helpful to share the magnitude of money I saved.  I also want to share the important lessons I learned to help you prevent many of the mistakes I made.

Fuel Surcharges

Delta imposes fuel surcharges on the US to Europe route.  Before I booked our original flights, I read that Delta doesn’t impose high fuel surcharges.  Business class to Europe is not one of those cases.  I incurred ~$300 in fuel surcharges and $100 in taxes.  In total, we spent ~$817 and 160,000 Korean Air SkyPass miles to fly Delta One Business Class non-stop round-trip to Europe.  I recommend using ITA Flight Matrix to approximate your fuel surcharges and taxes prior to making an award booking.

Stopovers

Korean Air SkyPass’ terms and conditions state two stopovers (staying at your destination for more than 24 hours) are allowed per round-trip, one stopover each way.  What I didn’t know until contacting Korean is that the program will allow you to add a connecting flight to your itinerary.  For us, I was able to add the same connecting Delta flights, that I paid $200/ticket on delta.com, onto our itinerary.  I simply found Delta award availability on Korean’s search engine and had the Korean Air agent add the DCA to JFK and DTW to DCA to our itinerary.  A change fee of ~$28 netted us a savings us ~$170/person for these tickets.

Change Fees

Korean Air will charge $28 to change your award itinerary.  SkyPass members also have the option to be refunded their miles.  The penalty for your miles to be refunded is dictated by the date you booked the ticket and whether the award is a Korea Domestic or International flight.  I actually ended up paying two $28 change fees: 1) Changing our departing Delta business class flight to economy on a different day, and 2) Adding two connecting Delta domestic flights to our existing itinerary (to get us from DCA to JFK and from DTW to DCA).

Korean Air Award Chart

Not shown on the Korean Air SkyPass chart is the fact that mixed award itineraries are charged at the higher cabin class rate.  Our original itinerary of non-stop Delta business class flights required 80,000 Korean Air miles per ticket.  The updated itinerary of non-stop Delta economy to Europe and business class from Europe requires the same 80,000 Korean Air miles.  While I wouldn’t recommend this, I felt we gained some of those miles back when I was able to add connecting flights that saved us $170/person.

Conclusion on Using the Korean Air SkyPass

As Richard Kerr mentions in his recent The Points Guy article, SkyTeam redemptions provide incredible value.  Similar to his experience booking a Delta flight using Virgin Atlantic miles (also a 1:1 Chase Ultimate Rewards airline partner), I was able to book round-trip flights from DC to Venice and Rome to DC for $474 and 80,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards points per ticket.

Hopefully the mistakes I made and shared will help prevent some of the pitfalls I experienced, save you time and most importantly, save you money.

Have you booked Delta flights with Korean Air miles?  If yes, please let me know how in the comments or by sending me an email pointswithq@gmail.com.