We want to use our FF miles to fly Bus/First from ATL to JNB in November 2013. Yes....almost a year

We want to use our FF miles to fly Bus/First from ATL to JNB in November 2013. Yes....almost a year away. DL puts awards seats into their computer 331 days in advance. However, it appears that all they put in at that point are the highest level of award seats. Typically November/December seats to JNB (Johannasburg, SA) are the lowest award level -- at least they have been for several years.
Question....at what point does DL "lower" the FF requirements for these flights? NW used to have actual "seasons" -- high, shoulder, low, with actual economy car rental st maarten dates. Not so Delta. I'm sure it is capacity controls.
Does anyone have any suggestions? I need to lock into my land arrangements now, but can't until I know what dates we can fly. Its a real hair pulling puzzle -- renedering the DL award seats nearly unusable. Surprise.
I wanted to travel the same route this year in October, and started looking last year at 331 days out. The high mileage requirement never dropped. I chose to go to Brazil instead. economy car rental st maarten I also chose to return economy car rental st maarten to United's Mileage Plus program. Hope you have better luck with Delta.
Femi...oddly there were low mileage seats on this route in late October/November/December this year. I have no idea when they actually first appeared. Its such a game. Worse than gambling in Las Vegas as far as odds stacked against the player.
I prefer Delta's ATL-JNB routing, seat style and availability of dates over United's. When it was time for me to book next year's trip using United miles, the redemption requirements were exactly as posted in the guidelines(although economy car rental st maarten I had to be much more flexible with dates).
Delta's website is terrible for searching FF flights and don't show all availability. Join Air France Flying Blue program and search for your Delta FF flights there. If you find what you want, call Delta and book (if you can't create it on their website).
A major peeve of mine. I have not been able to find a "miles" trip on Delta in several years. Their actual available awards never match their so called award charts that I have found. I am wanting to ditch Delta and move on to United (much more fair) due to this. Anyone want to trade United miles for my Delta miles
Right on, hpeabody ! For Delta FF miles are monies owed. They want us to use more miles for trips as that reduces their debt. We signed on for a trip last fall that used many more miles than that on the award chart just so we could get out of the program. Unhappily we had to cancel the trip and put the miles back into our account. Now looking for trips to do this. We have a lot of miles. Don't know anything about United's program but think American's is much better than Delta's, or, at least, that's been our experience.
economy car rental st maarten