The full-page ads promoting the offer set Bronk's mind racing. He and his family were already flying on Delta to Fort Myers over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend. Just one more similar trip and they'd all qualify for the free flight. Maybe, Bronk thought, it was time to visit his brother-in-law in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
"It was almost too good to be true," he said.
But as Bronk began poring over the promotion's fine print and asking questions of a Delta customer service representative, he quickly learned it wasn't going to be that easy.
First, Delta doesn't fly to Kuala Lumpur. The airline does fly to Tokyo, so Bronk began researching what it would cost to fly free to Japan and then pay for a connecting flight to Malaysia.
Second, the promotion had a number of restrictions. To qualify, applicants had to be frequent-flier club members and take those two qualifying round trips by April 15. (Also, Delta shuttle flights did not qualify.) Applicants who qualified for the free flight would receive their award certificates four to eight weeks after April 15, or about the beginning of June. That would leave 10 months until April 15, 2005, when travel on the free flight had to be completed.
Ten months sounds like a long time, but eligible free seats under the promotion are not plentiful. The seats are the same ones frequent fliers are trying to reserve. As the ads state: "Inventory is limited and seats may not be available on all flights or in all markets." Reading between the fine print, that means the more exotic the destination, the more improbable there will be seats available.
Bronk said the Delta agent told him there were almost no seats available to Tokyo when he wanted to fly in early June, and returning was even more problematic.
