Getting into Business Class on Air France with Delta miles is tough on the surface. If you search fo

Getting into Business Class on Air France with Delta miles is tough on the surface. If you search for awards using Delta miles you ll rarely find that there are seats available on Air France flights.
But there is a way to get into Business Class using Air France miles that has a lot more availability. It s not cheap, but for still reasonable ticket prices and only 15,000 miles each way it s possible.
O is the fare bucket that upgraded seats get booked into, and you ll want to buy your ticket on a flight that has seats open in this fare class so you can upgrade right away. You can go to AirFrance.us and search for award seats in Business Class to identify those with O seats available.
Flights that show up as Classic Award in Business Class have O class open and are ready for an upgrade. Make sure they are Air France flights with an AF in front of the flight number, not KL for KLM or DL for Delta. Alternatively, you can pay to use ExpertFlyer.com which will let you look for Air France O class more precisely.
Now that you ve found flights you can upgrade on, you ll need to buy a Premium Economy ticket. Air France has 3 Premium Economy fares, W , S , and A . Only W and S are eligible for upgrades and S is the lower of the two fares. Usually from the East Coast to Europe it runs about $2,000 $2,500 roundtrip.
The easiest way to check the fare is to call on the phone and ask for an Air France S fare. But if you are shy or want to check all dates, you can go to the site ITASoftware.com , which has a powerful airfare search engine. There, enter your destination and click on the Advanced routing codes link:
You can t buy a ticket on AirFrance.com or any other location besides Delta if you want to upgrade your flight. The key is having a Delta ticket number so Delta can access your ticket to upgrade it, and the only way to guarantee that is to book on Delta.com or on the phone with Delta.
By default Delta sells Air France flights with Delta flight numbers. For example, the flight above Air France 9, is sold by Delta as DELTA 1017 OPERATED BY DELTA CODESHARE PARTNER, AIR FRANCE AS AIR FRANCE 9.
For intra-Europe flights like Paris to Milan you won t be upgraded to Business, but you will be seated in Premium Economy quality inn palm springs which is basically the same on those short flights. You sit right behind Business Class in the same kind of seats (which are the same as coach on these short flights), and while the middle seat isn t blocked, it s less likely to be filled than in coach.
You also get a 50% Medallion Qualifying Miles boost for booking Premium Economy, which you don t get for booking the lowest upgradable Economy fare on Delta flights. And you get full Medallion Qualifying Dollars because you re buying your ticket directly from Delta.
With Business Class awards getting tougher quality inn palm springs to find thanks to this stronger economy, you need every angle you can to save money on the big seats to Europe, and this is one of them if you re willing to pay up. And starting next Summer, Air France will be rolling out new lie-flat seats that will be among the best in the world for Business Class.
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All went well until the end of the process The agent claimed that AF had not yet released the upgradeable seats to Delta. (My flight is still six weeks away.). She suggested I call back at least one month before ETD. Anyone have experience or advice around this?
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