How worthless is the new Delta SkyMiles?

[Carolinian]

Some on FlyerTalk call it SkyPiles, and for good reason.

I was once a DL SkyMiles Gold Medallion before Rob Borden gutted the program, when I bailed out to NW. Now that DL has taken over NW, some of my NW Worldperks miles that I had not been able to burn have been involuntarily converted to SkyPiles, and the Jeff Robertson version of SkyPiles is much worse than the Borden version.

I recently checked several TATL (trans-Atlantic) itineraries on the DL and NW websites for award availbility. At NW and in the Borden and pre-Borden days at DL there was reasonable TATL availibility at normal miles, even if you were flexible a few weeks out in high season. Ten months out, almost everything was availible. That has all changed. After checking US to Dublin for a relative and finding nothing at anything but high miles (and with their unique and disadvantageous 3-tier award system, high means sky high) over multiple months, I checked US to Bucharest over the entire upcoming ten months and found nothing but high miles seats the whole time, including low season. This really stinks.

And DL raised the minimum number of miles for TATL award tickets to 60K, although those seem to be extreme rarities these days. Usually, one has to part with far more miles than that on DL. On AA, in comparision, a low or shoulder season TATL award ticket is 40K miles and they are actually availible at that level. On BMI they are 45K miles all year and they are actually availible. BMI has even got me one way award tickets KIV to VIE on their partner Austrian airlines' Friday afternoon flights that are usually sold out and often oversold for a mere 6K miles on several occaisions a month or two before the flight.

FF programs are all about incentives. DL has certainly given me an incentive to avoid buying tickets on it or its partners like the plague. They have stolen my NW miles and they will not get any of my cash or my employers cash for my work related travel in the future.

[Carolinian]

Here is an interesting thread on the subject from FlyerTalk:

SkyMiles Awards make no sense - FlyerTalk Forums

[d1950m]

We have found Delta charges more than other airlines. We used ours to fly to Hawaii last summer. It cost 52,000 miles per person, while my parents, daughter, son-in-law, son and daughter-in-law only used 40,000 flying United. We booked ours as soon as we could as did they. This year we used United. 40,000. At the same time Delta was 78,000. I just checked and Delta is now down to 62,000. We cancelled our American Express Sky Miles Card and are using our United card only. When we talked to American Express, they asked why we were cancelling. We told them two reasons, your fee went up $15 and it was not easy getting flights to where we wanted to go.
The three tier can be a joke. We tried high, medium and low, different days, they were the same amount. Maybe it was just when we tried, but it did not leave a good feeling. A high out and a medium back. No difference. Same with a high out and a low back. It was so crazy, we thought what the heck, try first class. It was marked LOW when economy was marked HIGH. The first class ticket was only 2000 miles more.
We talked to an agent, "We just can't give our product away". Had to remind her, that American Express pays for those miles, so the flights are not exactly free using the credit card miles.

[dougp26364]

Delta indeed seems to have far fewer point saver award tickets for FF's. If they weren't cheaper than everyone else we probably wouldn't fly them. Unfortunately, since all airlines are about at bad as the other, price wins the day, even if we have a tough time spending those miles