Delta SkyMiles is the loyalty program people love to hate. It’s been an industry leader in making customer-unfriendly moves, such as changing award prices with no warning (and claiming that letting members know in advance is illegal), eliminating award charts, rewarding miles based on the ticket price and not the miles in the air, and dynamic award pricing, which makes SkyMiles more like a fixed-value program. If you look at the award values, Delta would really like it if you redeem your miles for 1 cent each.
If you can find a Delta premium cabin flight at the base award price, booking it with miles from Flying Blue or Virgin Atlantic is usually cheaper than SkyMiles. I did that when we flew from Frankfurt to Orlando (on Delta’s worst long-haul business class, no less!).
The last time I used Delta’s program for anything other than domestic flights was in early 2019 when I redeemed 55,000 SkyMiles for premium economy on Virgin Atlantic to London.
If there’s any silver lining to Delta’s approach to the SkyMiles program, I no longer hoard SkyMiles. With some programs, I’ll hang onto my points for an aspirational trip, like when I used points from American AAdvantage and United MileagePlus to book flights to Japan in business and first class.
I’m usually terrible with the earn and burn mindset, and I earn more points than I use, but not with Delta. If we’re looking to fly with them, I’ll always see if it makes sense to use points instead of paying cash.
For example, I’m looking at flights to New York this winter. Several months out, prices are reasonable.
Two tickets in the Main Cabin would cost $218, or 17,000 SkyMiles and $11.20. That’s before you consider that I’ll save another 15% when paying with points for having a Delta co-brand AMEX card, which brings the price down to 14,400 SkyMiles.
That comes out to about 1.43 cents per SkyMile.
For the return flights, the cash prices and the miles required were higher. When I did the math, the price per mile was slightly lower at a 1.26 cents valuation for those tickets.
I’m glad to redeem SkyMiles for this value. I no longer consider Delta SkyMiles a program to accumulate miles for future redemptions. I don’t actively try to earn them either but there are occasionally some great sign-up offers for the Delta co-brand cards from AMEX if you’re eligible. When you see a 70,000-point SkyMiles bonus, think of it as a $1,000 credit for Delta flights and not some way to fly to Europe in Business or first class for free.
Want to comment on this post? Great! Read this first to help ensure it gets approved.
Want to sponsor a post, write something for Your Mileage May Vary, or put ads on our site? Click here for more info.
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and sign up to get emailed notifications of when we post.
Whether you’ve read our articles before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our team.