How can you find the best value for your SkyMiles? Are Delta SkyMiles worthless? Can you book Delta One for cheap? Am I an idiot for caring about SkyMiles? These are the questions we get about the wildly popular (yet maddening) Delta SkyMiles program, so we do our best to answer all of them and more. Whether you want to book quick, cheap flights within the U.S. or fly business class to Asia (and everything in between), we go over all the best ways to earn and burn Delta SkyMiles.
How can you find the best value for your SkyMiles? Are Delta SkyMiles worthless? Can you book Delta One for cheap? Am I an idiot for caring about SkyMiles? These are the questions we get about the wildly popular (yet maddening) Delta SkyMiles program, so we do our best to answer all of them and more. Whether you want to book quick, cheap flights within the U.S. or fly business class to Asia (and everything in between), we go over all the best ways to earn and burn Delta SkyMiles.
(00:00) - What level of Delta status does Kyle have?
(00:45) - What would we do with 200,000 Delta SkyMiles?
(05:00) - Some of the best ways to use SkyMiles
(09:00) - And the worst…
(14:00) - A word from our sponsor (us): Get the Extra Mile Newsletter to earn more miles
(15:00) - Delta SkyMiles 101
(17:00) - Why Delta prices SkyMiles awards differently than other airlines
(20:30) - Inside the infamous “Sad State of SkyMiles” story from 2023
(23:15) - Why SkyMiles Flash Sales are like “Clearance Meat”
(28:45) - The best destinations to target for a good SkyMiles deal
(34:00) - Where can you find a pseudo-Delta SkyMiles “award chart”?
(36:00) - American Express credit cards and what Delta’s strategy with its profitable partner
(39:30) - Delta One SkyMiles deals … are they even possible?
(42:15) - How to find Delta SkyMiles redemptions outside of flash sales
(45:30) - Are Delta SkyMiles worthless?
(47:00) - The #1 key to getting good value from your SkyMiles
(49:15) - Helping a traveler from SLC earn SkyMiles fast
(53:00) - What one change would Gunnar make to the SkyMiles program?
Produced by Gunnar Olson & Long Tran
Edited by David Strutt
Show music: “All That” by Benjamin Tissot
Yo. I am Gunnar Olson here with the newly elected chair of the Delta Silver Medallion fan club. It's Kyle Potter. You you made it all of ten seconds before we have to issue a correction. I do not have Delta silver medallion status.
I have not had status with Delta for three years and counting. I'm feeling good. For three years and counting. Wow. I see.
Well, that makes you a weird, president-elect of the silver medallion fan club. First first order of business is gonna be, calling for your lucky share. Alright, Kyle. We are, we're doing a SkyMiles episode this week, which we're excited to dig into because there's a lot of fun to be had in the program, a lot of weirdness to be had in the program. But to get started today, I wanna find something out from you.
If you had 200,000 Delta SkyMiles, what would you do with them? You ready for, like, a really unsatisfying answer? Yeah. I'd save them. I'd save them for a good deal, which I know is the the exact opposite of what we tell people to do of earn miles and use them, but Delta Sky miles never expire.
I have, you know, I I don't have children. I have a lot more flexibility flexibility to to book a Delta flight when the SkyMiles flash sale comes up, which we're gonna talk about a lot in this show is really just being the single best bar, not not even close way to redeem Delta SkyMiles, whether it's, you know, flying to Europe for under 30,000 SkyMiles round trip or to Tokyo for under 60,000 SkyMiles or just booking a cheap domestic flight when I need it. I don't have a particular use of mind. I'm gonna wait for the deal to come to me, and I know I know that I can use up 200,000 Delta SkyMiles within the matter of probably two years, if not less, on some pretty awesome trips for rates that I cannot even get a whisper of through other airline mileage programs. What about you?
200 k on the clock. Go. Yeah. I went for, aggressive counting of 200,000 SkyMiles. Instead of yours, your kind of pie in the sky, I'll save them.
I went with some very specific redemption. So here's what we're doing. Okay? We're doing a trip to Seoul and Taipei. MSP to Seoul, a 110 k, SkyMiles each way.
So I'm just going one way to Seoul. In business class. In business class. Which is which is a fare that we have seen. Yep.
And that's a a Thrift Traveler premium flight deal alert we sent, a few weeks ago, in fact. 15,000 miles to return to MSP from Taipei. The one way pricing on that last Taipei deal. Right. Yep.
Yep. So that brings me to a 125 k total. Then I'm gonna go ahead and book this one of these most recent SkyMiles deals. And I'm going to Zurich, bringing the skis for 32,000 sky miles round trip from MSP, which will bring me up to a 157,000 total. Thank you for saying that because I cannot do that math on the fly.
Alright. Skis are staying with me for the next one. I'm flying WestJet to Calgary 25,000 sky miles round trip. That's a blanket WestJet fare that they always run from MSP. It's pretty amazing.
That brings me to a 182 k total. Checking my math? No. I trust you. I could I could have said anything.
Alright. Guess what? Skis are coming with me to Denver, Kyle. We're going 10,000 SkyMiles round trip to Denver, which is with our latest SkyMiles deal to Denver from MSP, putting me at a 192 k total. How do you like that?
You got 8,000 SkyMiles left over for a nice bottle of champagne in the SkyClub before one of these trips. Lansing Green Label organic Brut, a 750 milliliter bottle, 8,000 sky miles on the nose. Saves me a $120 in cash that I wouldn't have spent When you started that, I thought you were gonna say Lansing, Michigan. I'm bringing the skis again. I have definitely gone to Lansing, Michigan.
My little brother was to Michigan State. Shout out, Jacko. Alright. That's 200,000 in total. SkyMiles, what do you think?
You your inventory was a lot more impressive than mine. But I I well, I've I've been proven very wrong making broad proclamations about how much better my answers are than you. Please see art fantasy draft where you just absolutely clobbered me. But I still feel pretty good about mine too. I like yours.
Well, thank you. That's that's good coming from you. I think you might know more about the SkyMiles program than just about anybody on this planet. So today, we're gonna talk all things SkyMiles and hear from Kyle's expertise. We'll show you our favorite sweet spots.
We'll explore the dark, dark drags of the SkyMiles program. And in our featured segment called the extra mile, we're gonna look at SkyMiles as a whole. Kinda what's the state of Delta SkyMiles, what you need to know, and what do we think will happen in the future. Welcome back to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Alright.
Let's jump into something hot and something cold. It's a bit of good travel news and a bit of bad travel news from the last week, and we're gonna start with something hot. Kyle, in your opinion, what are some of the best ways to use Delta SkyMiles? I mean, I I've said it before, but I'll say it again. It's just to wait for the deal to come to you knowing that it will because Delta SkyMiles flash sales when the airline just randomly cuts award rates to half, sometimes even less of what they typically charge, whether it's domestically over to Europe, to Taiwan or Tokyo, even Australia and New Zealand.
I mean, these sales are out there. If you are flexible and you wait for them, you cannot do better. So just as an example, you know, we recently sent a deal to Europe with round trip flights, including Delta major Delta hubs like Minneapolis, Atlanta, Detroit, Boston, New York, Salt Lake City for as low as 27,000 sky miles round trip to basically anywhere in Europe, including many of the non stops. That is, in most cases, less than half of what any other airline would charge you. It's also quite a bit more than less than half of the 100,000 sky miles or more that Delta typically charges for these kinds of flights.
These kind of things are are not just worth waiting for. They're not just the best ways to use Delta SkyMiles. They're some of the best deals in travel. You just have to be flexible enough and patient enough to take advantage of them. Yeah.
I think the the flash sales are obviously the best way to take advantage. Sometimes Delta advertises these things. Sometimes they don't. So, obviously, we're we're biased here, but we have people scraping and searching for all of these sales all the time. And so when they come up, usually, we beat Delta to their own, sale announcement email by by at least a day in some cases.
So that's always fun to do. But, yeah, Kyle, you're absolutely right. Just just follow the sale. And, you know, on our website, we wrote a story about the best destinations to target if you wanna get kind of the best bang for your buck with SkyMiles. And we'll talk about several of them here in our discussion a little later.
But that's a good guide too if if you're just, like, stumped and you don't know exactly what the best way to use your SkyMiles is. There are a few kind of tried and true destinations. The one that of that jumps off the page to me is Taipei. Obviously, they're having trouble filling that plane, and they're selling those at some ridiculously cheap SkyMiles rates. So if you need to get to Asia, check that out.
But there are tons of good ways to use your SkyMiles. But like you said, you just gotta gotta stake out, those those flash sales and make sure you're getting the best value out of them. Otherwise, you could pay a 100,000 SkyMiles round trip very easily to fly economy to Europe. Or Miami. Yeah.
I mean, it it can get really ugly. And when it it is really ugly and you're not seeing something that you like, that my tried and true way of using SkyMiles is just for domestic flights, whether it's a quick domestic trip, you know, for a long weekend somewhere, or in many cases, I would say how I've used SkyMiles the most over the last, you know, four, five, six, seven years is just for positioning flights. So I book, you know, a great international long haul trip using another airline's mileage program, whether that's American or Air Canada, whatever. The airlines that have an award chart or something like it. And I know I can book these flights for reasonable rates, but it's not departing from Minneapolis because, you know, these airlines don't fly in and out of Minneapolis because Delta doesn't let them.
So that means I need to get to Chicago or New York City or Boston or Washington DC or wherever, and that's where the SkyMiles come in handy. Because with a handful of exceptions, which I'm sure we'll get into, you can generally count on getting a decent deal with your SkyMiles, just booking those quick and easy domestic flights, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. That's I would say I've probably used, I don't know, a 100,000 SkyMiles or more over the last few years just in booking domestic flights in order to kind of put the pieces together for a bigger international trip. Yeah. That's that's really good advice.
So we we talked a little bit about some of the pain that you can find especially So much pain. There's not much pain. It hurts. It can stop. We will to ease our pain, we will get, something cold, and we'll talk about some of these other worst ways to, use Delta SkyMiles.
And one of them, like we mentioned, is sometimes the award rates just flying to Europe simply are just egregious. A 100,000 SkyMiles or more. Please don't pay that. That's why they charge that is because there are people out there who will pay it without thinking about it. Another one that jumps out to mind as we're talking about Europe is if you wanna fly Delta one to Europe at all, sometimes it's just an offensive 400,000 or 500,000 sky miles, to to do that.
And it's just, again, please please don't pay that. Although, that gives Delta an excuse to charge it again in the future. Well, they're going to anyway. So whether you book it or not, it kind it's kind of immaterial, but you can do better whether it's using Delta SkyMiles or something else. And I would probably even broaden that and just say Delta one business class in general.
And not even just Delta one business class, but Air France and KLM and Virgin Atlantic and Korean Air and China Airlines because, you know, over the course of the last two years or so, you know, Delta has really eliminated any ability to save SkyMiles by booking a partner airline like that. So whatever whatever airline you're flying, whether it's Delta or it's one of their partner SkyTeam carriers. If you're trying to fly business class using SkyMiles, it's tough sledding out there. It can be done. You know, we'll get into it in the extra mile, I think, of where some of the pockets of value are.
But I certainly if it it flying business class is not the be all and end all of miles. Not everybody is trying to do that. There is more to getting value out of your points and miles than flying in a lie flat seat. But if that is your priority, it's hard to pick a worse way to use your Delta SkyMiles than that when it costs you 500,000 SkyMiles round trip or more in order to book one of those business class seats. Yep.
The lie flat seats will definitely cost you many, many SkyMiles in a lot of cases. There are flash sales for Delta one though as we talked about and as we will talk about again later. Another area where I see lots of pain when it comes to booking with SkyMiles are some of these coveted nonstop flights. So I'm thinking the one that comes to mind always is, like, Detroit, Salt Lake, Minneapolis, Atlanta flying nonstop to Honolulu or Maui. Some of those rates are crazy.
Just I mean, they're they reflect the cash price. It's gonna be a 150,000 sky miles in some cases, maybe a 100,000 sky miles. And the the part that makes it so annoying is that you can book some of those same flights through Virgin Atlantic or through flying blue for for a fraction of the price. So that I guess maybe that just, adds insult to injury when you know that you're able to book it for so so much cheaper, when you book through one of their partners. Yeah.
I mean, just to to put some real numbers on this. Just over the weekend, I was looking at nonstop flights from our hub home here in Minneapolis to Honolulu on Delta's nonstop. Delta was charging a 146,000 sky miles for next winter. That exact same flight, exact same dates, same plane, same everything, you're still flying Delta, but instead you're booking through Air France KLM flying blue for a grand total of 42,000 miles round trip. And and it that's in main cabin.
Correct? Yes. That's a main cabin fare when you book through Air France versus the cheapest rate that you see when you book with Delta SkyMiles is always a basic fare, which means if your plans change and you need to cancel it, you're gonna forfeit a ton of miles. You can't pick your seat for free. The list goes on.
You can't even get into the Delta SkyClub if you have a way to get in. You have a basic fare whether you booked it with miles or with cash, you can't get into Delta's lounges. It's it's tough. It's a tough beat. Not a great look for Delta.
We're gonna we're gonna help people understand how to get more value out of Delta SkyMiles. This is what it's all about. But this isn't a podcast where we're gonna be singing SkyMiles praises nonstop. I mean, there is, I would say, more so than any other airline program, there are more pitfalls, more traps, including, you know, Delta trying to get you to upgrade from a basic fare to main cabin by paying using SkyMiles for that difference, which is just an atrociously bad way to use Delta SkyMiles. Delta does not make it easy to make sure that you're you're getting value out of your SkyMiles.
What they try to do is they just try to get you to cough up SkyMiles at any chance you get, whether it's avoiding basic economy or even paying for luggage using Delta SkyMiles, which, you know, both of those are are at the bottom of the barrel of of ways to use Delta SkyMiles. Yeah. I think, you're right, Kyle. We wanna be your kinda jungle guide through the SkyMiles program here, during this episode, and we'll we'll, hopefully keep you from falling into any traps in that case. But before we dig into all of it, let's take a break.
We're going the extra mile on Delta miles today on the show and how you can get the most out of them. But if you wanna dive deeper into points and miles every week, we've got a free newsletter you'll want. It's called, wait for it, the extra mile. Each and every Monday morning, our credit card guru Jackson Newman rounds up the biggest news from the past week of all things travel hacking. Expect the latest big credit card bonuses, airline mileage program guides, sweet spot redemptions, and a big dash of personality.
Not from us. You've had enough of that. You've probably already turned off this podcast. Hopefully not. Keep listening.
The personality is from Jackson. Yeah. You're gonna need to sign up to hear from Jackson every week. The extra mile newsletter can be found at thriftytraveler.com/extramile, all one word, and then check your inboxes on Monday mornings for the latest dose of points wizardry. Again, it's a completely free tool that you can be using and you should be using.
You have nothing to lose. Alright. Back to the show. Alright. Welcome back.
We're digging into the extra mile topic this week, which is the state of Delta SkyMiles. Kyle, can you tell us a little bit more about everything people need to know on Delta SkyMiles? Yeah. Let's let's set the table a little bit, shall we? I think in order to understand where Delta SkyMiles are good, where they go wrong, you need to understand some basics.
Basics. And the the biggest basic of all is that Delta does not have an award chart. They haven't for, you know, almost a decade. So an award chart is really, really important. It is kind of the key of of how most people are able to get the most value out of their points and miles because think of an award chart like a cheat sheet.
If you want to go from, you know, Minneapolis to Europe or from Chicago to Amsterdam or from Miami to Denver, With most airlines that still have an award chart, that is the cheat sheet that determines exactly how many points you're gonna need in order to make that happen. Some determine that price in distance, some determine it by region, some do it a mix of the three, but most airlines have some form of an award chart that determines exactly how many miles you're going to need in order to make things predictable. So you know how many miles you're going to need to save up in order to make that happen. And Delta does not do that. Not even close.
Other airlines have started to follow this model of dynamic award pricing where the award rates fluctuate based on the cash price. So the more, you know, the more a flight costs you in cash, the more it's gonna cost you in points. But Delta has taken it to an extreme. They have been doing this for a decade. It is unpredictable.
Pinning down exactly how many, miles you're gonna need in order to book a Delta flight or even a flight with one of its partner airlines like Air France or KLM or Virgin Atlantic is absolutely maddening. I get the frustration with Delta SkyMiles, and this is why. And I think in particular, it's because Delta business class and booking any business class ticket using Delta SkyMiles is exorbitant. It is highway robbery in many cases with rates of 300,000 SkyMiles or more for a one way ticket. And this is why, because Delta doesn't have a rule book.
They torched it. But that opens up some opportunities. And that's what we're gonna get into is try to get people past the frustration of, well, how am I supposed to earn this many miles, or how am I supposed figure out how many miles I need, or why can't I find a single decent redemption for my SkyMiles, and that's why my balance is at $3.04, or 500,000 or more because I just can't figure out a good way to use them. And I think above all, it's important to understand why we've gotten to this place. And I think it's because and this is just me talking here, though.
I would I wanna hear what you think too, Gunnar. I think Delta, to its credit, has set itself apart in The US airline industry to an extent that it can really afford to treat SkyMiles like an afterthought, that people don't fly Delta in order to earn and redeem Delta SkyMiles. They do it because it's the most on time airline in the country. That service is, generally speaking, better, warmer, more friendly, more earnest than what you might get on on some of the other major US airlines that most planes look pretty much identical. They've got the same, you know, fairly new seat back screens at a time when most of Delta's competitors have ripped them out if they've even installed them to begin with.
And all of that means that people are booking Delta to fly Delta, and they just get SkyMiles as a bonus. And I don't know that any other major US airline can has been able to do that to the same extent. Yeah. I think part of this is also that, a lot of Delta flyers, people with SkyMiles and SkyMiles accounts and people who are working within the SkyMiles system to fund and fuel a lot of their travels are living in Delta's hubs, which are more than any other airline besides, American's presence in Charlotte, they're hub captives. So it's a lot of people who kinda need Delta to get anywhere.
I'm thinking specifically I'm looking at you, Atlanta, Detroit, Minneapolis, Salt Lake. Those places in particular where competition is just not that fierce. Delta has a stronghold there. A majority of flights, I I believe, from all of those airports are flying Delta. So it's a lot of people who have to be in the SkyMiles program, obviously, there are good ways to work around it if you need to.
But, yeah, you're right. They can treat it as an afterthought because a lot of their a lot and, you know, if you want Internet on the plane, you need to have a SkyMiles account. So they they're piling people into this program, but they don't need it to be crazy effective. They don't need you to get insane value to fly business class overseas from your sky miles because they know you're already in and they know that, you know, you need them more than they need you in some cases. I mean, there truly is a cynical logic to this, which is that the vast majority of flyers in hubs like Minneapolis and Detroit and Atlanta and Salt Lake City don't have a choice, and Delta knows it.
And Delta knows that it can get away with charging, you know, 400,000 sky miles for a business class ticket or a 150,000 sky miles for a round trip ticket to Honolulu and basic economy because there isn't a meaningful alternative and because they know that there are enough Delta flyers out there who have that amount of miles and are willing to spend them because they will fly Delta and only Delta. Yeah. A lot of sky miles farmers out there. People cultivating their sky miles and, letting them grow. So, Kyle, I have a question for you.
A few years ago, we you specifically wrote a story on the website called the sad state of sky miles. What was going through your head when you wrote that? What was that story about? You know, looking back, I think that story, which we published in, late May of twenty twenty three, I think was really the low point for for SkyMiles, at least as we've seen it with since the worst of the pandemic in the last five plus years of of a bounce back in travel. And, you know, what we tried to capture in that story was the frustration of people seeing all of these atrocious prices, whether you're trying to get to Europe or domestically or over to Asia or wherever, not just in business class, but in any cabin.
And that, you know, the steady stream of SkyMiles flash sales when Delta would, you know, slash these award prices and cut travelers a good deal if they could travel to a specific destination at a specific time. It's not across the board, but you're able to find a great deal if you could do this. That stuff just really evaporated. And it had been, you know, at that at the point when we published this in the spring of twenty twenty three, a year or more since we had found a really good string of SkyMiles flash sales. And, fortunately, things have turned around since then because we have, you know, for the better part of the last two years, had a good trend of solid SkyMiles flash sales again and again and again.
But back then, it was really tough. And, you know, I think as much as we can say that Delta can Delta can do these things because they can get away with it because they know people will pay the higher prices. And if they don't, they know those people aren't going to stop paying good money to fly Delta because it's their only real choice. We just hit a breaking point where people needed to hear that message and say to themselves, alright. I can fly Delta.
It's a great airline. It's the only major, you know, legacy carrier at my home airport, but that doesn't mean I need to focus on earning SkyMiles. And I think that was the message. And fortunately, things have turned around in the year since. Is there any part of you that thinks that, Delta read your story and turn things around right after you published it?
Not even a little part of you? No. I don't think so. I still I don't know. I think you got someone's attention, and we got a bunch of good SkyMiles deals because of it.
Kyle, the mighty pen. A few years later, was it last year? What you wrote the Delta SkyMiles flash sales are the clearance meet of sales. Can you explain what clearance meet is in this analogy that you use, which I think is actually beautiful even though it's gross? Figure it out.
No. What I mean by clearance meet is SkyMiles flash sales are great. There's I'm never gonna complain about, you know, booking a round trip from Minneapolis to Amsterdam and back on the nonstop Delta flight for 27,000 SkyMiles round trip in August of twenty twenty five. That's incredible. That's one of the best Delta SkyMiles deals of all time.
But it's still kinda clearance me because Delta isn't doing this out of the goodness of its heart. It's doing this to generate a buzz knowing that people are gonna be talking about, oh, did you see this flight? Oh, like, okay. Well, I guess I should keep booking those Delta flights because there are good deals out there. Or, you know, I mean, I guess I'll keep swiping my Delta credit card because did you hear about that, you know, 27,000 Sky Mile round trip to, to Amsterdam or 25,000 Sky Miles round trip to Taiwan?
These are the things that get people to invest more heavily more heavily than they probably should in the Delta ecosystem. And then the other side of it is that what we've seen and whether it's the case with Amsterdam, I I can't say for sure, but whether it's the case for Taiwan, we can say with 100% confidence is that they are trying to fill seats that would otherwise go out empty. They are selling clearance meat before it goes bad. They're still great deals, but let's be honest about what they are and the and the fact that Delta holds all the cards that this isn't a situation where if you really study the program, you can figure out ways to beat Delta at its own game. They are still the house.
They are still winning. They are accomplishing their goals by filling these seats with the discounted fares and some of these great deals that we're talking about. But you can still win in some respect yourself too if if you're flexible on a forum, if you wait for them, if you find these deals or you get them in your inbox. Yeah. They're they're filling empty seats.
And what they're also doing is they're filling up that lowest fare bucket so that they can charge more both in cash and in Delta SkyMiles later. So in some of these cases, like, we saw that those flights to Amsterdam, those are always full flights. And at 27,000 SkyMiles round trip, you've gotta wonder, like, you could, they can obviously do better by charging more for that flight. But the sooner you can fill up those cheapest fares, right, and get those kind of basic economy fares out of the way, then the people who are booking two, three, four months out are gonna be looking at the sky high sky miles fares in, you know, over a 100,000 round trip that they actually wanna be charging. So this is kinda smart business if they know that down the line, they're gonna be able to charge a lot a lot more.
But, I don't care if it's smart business. You should just go ahead and book the cheapest fare that you can right now. It's it's a pretty it's a great, actually, value proposition for people with SkyMiles. And, you know, dynamic pricing is frustrating. Right?
You you want to be able to know exactly what the value of your point is. But if they're gonna offer you if they're gonna say all of a sudden your point is worth, you know, five x, you should probably just jump on it instead of griping about when it's, you know, negative five x. I mean, there are trade offs and everything. Dynamic award pricing that Delta uses with all of these unpredictable and often sky high rates is really frustrating. It's hard to pin down exactly what you need, but the upside of that is that if you time it right, if you're flexible, you can book that round trip to Amsterdam or Paris or Rome or wherever for not just a fraction what of what Delta typically charges, but for a fraction of what any airline program charges.
So, you know, being able to fly to Amsterdam or Paris for under 30,000 sky miles round trip, most other airlines that use an award chart where it's predictable and you know exactly what that flight is going to cost you, would probably charge 60,000 miles or more round trip. Oh, and by the way, you need to find availability at those rates in order to book at that lowest and best rate. And can you do that in January and February to Paris? Yeah. You probably can.
It's probably pretty easy. In August? No. That's not gonna happen. In ninety five cases out of a 100, that's just not gonna happen.
So this is the area where Delta shines. So I cannot stress this enough. If you can be flexible, this is where you win with Delta SkyMiles is by waiting for these deals. It's by being patient, by going to delta.com, not just using your Fly Delta app because it's inferior when it comes to finding these better deals. Because on the Delta website, you can use the flexible price calendar and not just look at a full week of availability, but five weeks of availability, which means if you're searching for a great deal and you're focused on September and you're searching from September 7 to the fourteenth and you're just on your Fly Delta app, you're just gonna see those dates.
But if you use the delta.com website and you use that calendar and you expand it to look at five weeks, you'll see September 7 looking a little ugly if you depart that day. But if you bump that back by a week, you can book it for a fraction of the sky miles. Yeah. It's definitely a really important tool to use on their website, and hopefully they hang on to that price calendar, as we've seen other airlines ditch theirs because it is super valuable to help find the absolute best sky miles rates. Kyle, in a minute, I want to talk about American Express and the American Express of all of this, which I think is super important for SkyMiles.
But first, we we teased at the top, some of our kind of best places to target, your, you know, your best overall redemptions for SkyMiles. You mentioned early on, that you use them almost exclusively for domestic flights. Can you talk about your strategy there? Yeah. You know, it's really just knowing that by and large and especially if you're flexible, you can count on Delta selling round trip fares for somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 20,000 sky miles round trip for your typical domestic flight.
It's almost almost always going to be half that if you just need a one way. So if you're if you're booking a round trip to Denver, you're set. Yeah. If you're if you've got at least a little bit of flexibility, you can count on some pretty reasonable rates. If you need a positioning flight like I often do to get to the East Coast in order to get on a flight that I might be booking with a different airline mileage program, being able to book for half the sky miles of a round trip reliably and and typically, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of five to 10,000 sky miles each way.
I mean, I can't remember the last time that I booked a a Delta trip for more than that domestically within The United States. I mean, paying more than 10,000 sky miles each way, to me, it means that, because I am personally able to be flexible, it means that I haven't done enough done a good enough job being flexible enough in order to make sure I'm getting the most bang for my buck out of my sky miles. Yeah. I I totally agree with that strategy. I I also use my sky miles to fly to Orlando and to fly to Phoenix and to fly to Denver and, these simple simple hops, where you can find really great value if you're just a little bit flexible in most cases.
You know, we're gonna we're gonna harp on flexibility a lot here. And let's let's take a step back and recognize that not everybody has that flexibility, and that's fine. This isn't to say that you need to be flexible in order to travel. What it means is that if you don't have the luxury of being flexible, if you can't, you know, bump things back by a week because of your school or work schedules or your kids' school schedules or day care or whatever responsibilities you have, that means that Delta probably isn't where you should have all your eggs in that basket, that you really need to broaden things. Because if you can't be flexible, it is very hard to win within Delta SkyMiles ecosystem.
Yeah. I I can't tell you how many emails we get saying, you know, I I need to be in Grand Rapids, Michigan from June 15 to June 17, you know, Friday to Sunday. And they're saying, how do I use my SkyMiles to do that? And I'm saying to them, that's a very specific and inflexible ask. And my guess is that's gonna probably be expensive unless you get lucky or you book way, way out in advance.
But, I think, besides just domestic flights, another sweet spot would be Mexico. Obviously, there's a lot of capacity flying to Mexico. Delta's always trying to, throw SkyMiles flash sales at some of those destinations, particularly Cancun. But we've seen SkyMiles flash sales to Puerto Vallarta and to Cabo as well pretty routinely. I'd say almost quarterly, they'll run a sale down to all of those three kinda Mexican travel hot spots.
Any others jump out at you of places where it'd be you know, we routinely see good deals? I mean, really, the rest of The Caribbean, it's probably a little more hit or miss than it is with Mexico where I really feel like you you can rely on a discounted rate getting to Mexico for, I would say, pretty easily under 20,000 sky miles round trip, in some cases, closer to 10. Those are those are pretty frequent deals that we find and send out. The Caribbean, you know, you get closer into the 15 to 25,000 sky miles or more, but still there are deals there. I think maybe the best one is Canada.
And that's that's twofold. Not only can you fly Delta up there, but you can also book, flights with Delta's partner, West WestJet, which, you know, Delta is full of contradictions. So we said Delta doesn't have an award chart. That is true. You cannot find a an award chart on Delta's site.
But what you can find is if you search enough flights to Calgary, to Vancouver, to Edmonton, wherever, if you search for enough of them, you'll see that it doesn't matter when you travel. Anytime you're flying to those cities from from a US city with WestJet service, you are gonna pay 25,000 sky miles round trip, which in some cases you can do a little bit better on a Delta operated flight if they're offering, you know, something in the neighborhood of 10 to 12,000 sky miles round trip. But for those really expensive flights when you really need to get to Calgary to go skiing and, Gunnar, this is music to your ears, and I know you've done this, so I don't need to tell you. But being able to book, you know, what would otherwise be a $5,600 flight round trip to Calgary to go skiing for 25,000 sky miles round trip is a pretty solid deal. So flying WestJet up to Canada and back is is a great way to use Delta SkyMiles.
There are lots of examples of international partner programs where Delta actually does adhere to an award chart. Can you tell me about some other examples of those? I mean, most of the rest of them come when you're not in The United States anymore. So Delta does not have an award chart for its own operated flights. It doesn't have an award chart for its partner flights either.
But once you leave The United States behind and you leave, you know, Canada and Mexico behind as well, the prices get a lot more stable for redeeming your Delta SkyMiles. Flying some of these SkyTeam partner airlines like Air France, KLM, Vietnam Airlines, China Airlines, which means that if you're trying to piece together a trip abroad and you need to get, for example, from Tokyo to Seoul or Tokyo to Taipei or from Amsterdam, even all the way down to South Africa as part of a much, much bigger trip, it's worth checking into your balance of Delta SkyMiles and seeing how far they can get you because unlike the unpredictable can't pin it down, sky high rates that you see here in The States are flying from The States to Europe with Delta. The rates are set in stone for, you know, those flights within Europe or from Europe down to South Africa or within Asia or wherever. So it's worth checking out. It's not always gonna be a slam dunk, but because those rates are much more stable, you're far, far more likely to get a better deal.
I mean, one of the biggest ones that comes to mind in this is, you know, being able to fly from, Tokyo to, Seoul for 15,000 sky miles each way in business class. That's a ticket that would typically cost $600 or more each way. So being able to book that for 15,000 sky miles is a great, great way to use your Delta Sky miles. A lot of people in points and miles talk about how sometimes SkyMiles aren't the most valuable currency out there, and you see that the people who clap back at them often say, you know, these redemptions outside of The US, especially these business class redemptions, can sometimes make them way more valuable. Obviously, your your mileage may vary on whether or not you can actually take advantage of all of those, but there are they they are awesome redemptions, and they you know, Delta does have a pseudo award chart when you're flying outside of The US.
Alright. I promise you we'd get back and talk about the American Express of it all. And Delta's partnership with American Express, they brag about how lucrative it is in all of their earnings calls. And, I got to imagine that it's a a good part of their business, and they love working with American Express. And I think a lot of that is piling people into these American Express credit cards.
Can you tell me about what what these cards will get travelers and and kinda what Delta's strategy is here? I mean, Delta is not shy about its strategy of and nor is any airline. Let's be clear, because every airline in The United States needs these banks in order to be profitable. It is the single most profitable entity of any airline is these co branded credit card relationships. Without it, none of these airlines, not just aren't profitable, they probably don't exist.
They ex Delta exists by the grace of American Express, which means that Delta needs to pump up credit card applications and get people to keep spending on those credit cards. So they've done a handful of things. You know, the first and most obvious one is as you touched on, when you get on a plane and that Delta plane has free Wi Fi, in order to get online, you need a Delta SkyMiles account, which begins this whole ecosystem of trying to get you to book more flights with Delta and then trying to open a Delta SkyMiles American Express card to get more benefits and some bonus miles. It's really powerful. It's a hamster wheel.
It's an brutally effective hamster wheel. Delta has turned this not just into an art form, but into a mega mega economy that, you know, probably within the next few years is gonna be making delta $10,000,000,000 a year. It's it'd be impressive if if I wasn't so cynical. But the important part of this is that within the last couple of years, Delta has introduced on all of its cobranded credit cards except for the no annual fee blue SkyMiles card. So the gold, the platinum, and the reserve.
They all get you an automatic 15% discount when redeeming Delta SkyMiles only on Delta operated flights. So if you're trying to book a KLM or a Virgin Atlantic or a Korean Air flight using your SkyMiles, you're not going to get this 15% discount. But what it means is that if you want the best deal flying Delta with your SkyMiles, you really do kind of need it pains me to say this. You really do kind of need an a Delta American Express card because, otherwise, you're gonna be paying 15% more. Yeah.
Those cards are so ubiquitous in the markets where Delta is obviously the most robust, and it's it's pretty amazing to see. Can I can I tell you when I'm when I'm out and, like, I'm at a at a coffee shop or at a restaurant or whatever, I always look at what credit card people are paying with? And every time I see, like, a Chase Sapphire Preferred card or something else, it makes me smile. It's like, you know what? Maybe somebody out there is reading us, Gunnar.
I always get people who who vaguely know what I do will sometimes ask me about, you know, what what are my thoughts on on credit cards or whatever. And they always just ask, like, well, what do you think about the Delta cards? And I tell them, like, yeah, there's it's useful in some ways, but it's probably not the best. And if you tell somebody with a Delta credit card that they don't have the best credit card, it's it's it's like insulting their firstborn. It there's such a crazy, weird level of pride in the Delta SkyMiles credit cards.
And, I just I I can't explain it or understand it. But that being said, I have one too. We kinda need them here in in these markets. It's if I wanna fly with a bag, I I need that card. So, I am the problem.
I am the problem, Kyle. So let's talk about, Delta One because we've chatted a little bit about how We've danced around it. Yeah. Delta One is not the best redemption typically with SkyMiles and neither is Delta's partners. When you book with SkyMiles, we're seeing, you know, those crazy fares, 400,000, 500,000.
I've seen I've seen close to 800, 900,000 round trip fares to Europe, which is just which is hilarious. The fact that they've even list that fare, like, somebody will pay for it. But there's been a bit of a sea change over the last few months, and we've seen a kind of a resurgence of Delta SkyMiles Delta one deals. Are we back? Delta one SkyMiles deals back, Kyle.
We are so almost back. We're not back. Let's be clear. If you want to fly business class, earning Delta SkyMiles should not be your first stop. It shouldn't be your second stop, third, fourth, eleventh stop.
You can do a lot better with other, in particular, transferable credit card points from banks like Chase or American Express or Capital One that are gonna give you the option to get a much better redemption again if flying business class is your goal. But what I can say is, again, to that crowd that has the ability to be flexible with their travel dates and probably more importantly, their destinations. We have I would say I'm encouraged by the Delta SkyMiles rates and flash sales that we've found for Delta One business class. I think in particular, the one that stands out most is Taipei. This new clearly struggling route where we've seen a handful of times over the last six months, Delta sell those fares for as low as I think the record low right now is 83,500 SkyMiles with that 15% discount for Delta SkyMiles cardholders.
You know, is that the best deal in the world? It's not. But if Delta SkyMiles are what you've got and you're interested in going to either Taiwan or elsewhere in Asia and you can use Taipei as a as kind of a jumping off point, that's pretty darn good. We've seen I would say this the same holds true for Seoul where there is a ton of Delta flights from across the country. So being able to book a Delta one suite to either Taipei or Seoul for, you know, 80 to 90,000 sky miles, sometimes more, sometimes closer to a 110, a 120,000 is the lowest rate that you're gonna see.
But those are much better deals than the the typical rates of, yeah, 400,000 sky miles or more each way. That starts to look like a bargain in comparison, and it is. Yeah. Absolutely. It's, it's getting a little easier.
Still not easy. And, again, as Kyle's mentioned many times here now, if your goal is to fly long haul and lie flat, probably start with a different currency than Delta SkyMiles. Alright. To close this kind of big segment, I wanna give some people some ideas of some of the best ways to maybe find a SkyMiles deal. I think I'll pump our own tires to start out and say that Thrifty Traveler Premium, we are searching almost every single route Delta flies every single day to make sure that we're capturing every single SkyMiles deal.
We have a big team of people who are doing this all the time. We take a ton of pride in catching every Delta SkyMiles flash sale. So come join us. You can even sign up for free, and then join premium if you want some more SkyMiles deals. But we have we have a pretty robust system of people looking for these things.
If you're alone and you wanna find SkyMiles deals, there is a bit of a pattern with some SkyMiles deals that we found. What is that, Kyle? Well, like we like we touched on at the top, you know, Delta SkyMiles award rates are driven primarily by the cash price, which means that as the cash price goes up, SkyMiles rates go up. If it drops, SkyMiles rates go down, which gives you an interesting wrinkle to be able to look out for deals on the flights that you really need. And that is a Google Flights price alert.
So there's basically a a a multistep process here. Number one, you set a price alert through Google Flights, filtering for the Delta flights that you want or several Delta flights that you want. Right? And then that way, if the price drops, you're gonna get an email that says, hey. You know, that $140 flight to Chicago that you were looking at is suddenly $46 each way.
That's pretty good. But you wanna book with Delta SkyMiles, so then you take it to the next step. This doesn't happen instantly where Delta drops the cash price and then the SkyMiles price also bottoms out at the same time. What we've noticed, this is a pattern that is very, very clear. It has emerged over the last couple of years, is that it takes somewhere in the neighborhood of, I would say, as few as four, but as many as twenty four hours after Delta cuts the price for a revenue flight that you would pay cash for for those SkyMiles rates to catch up, which means you set a price alert, and then you gotta be patient for a little bit.
You set yourself a calendar reminder into your phone to go back and check. So that that example I came up with before of a $140 to $46 to Chicago is exactly what I did earlier this year. And I've seen it again and again with domestic flights in particular as I think where this is the strongest, but it is also quite prevalent, in in other markets as well, especially Mexico, Canada, and The Caribbean. Yeah. We call it the sky miles lag at at Thrifty Traveler Premium, and it's it it is a pattern that that almost always follows suit.
And and you will see it. You know, a lot of flight prices move early in the morning, especially from The US, and and we're always up looking at them. But when we see a crazy low delta fare, we always make a note like, hey. We gotta check on this again tonight. And that's some of the greatest SkyMile deal SkyMiles deals we found, tend to follow in that pattern.
And, so that's a good thing to just keep in mind. If if you find a really good cash rate and you're thinking, man, I wish the SkyMiles rate would reflect this, it might. You just might need to give it a little bit of time. So, Kyle, let's let's talk about some kind of big broad takeaways of this whole discussion. And I I guess we'll start here.
Despite what you may have heard and read on the Internet, are Delta SkyMiles worthless? Delta SkyMiles are not worthless. They are worth less than other airline mileage programs. I think that's irrefutable. Would I rather have a 100,000 American advantage miles or a 100,000 Delta Sky miles?
A 100,000 American advantage miles every single day and twice on Sundays. Sundays. And that's despite the fact that I really don't like flying on American Airlines. I would much, much rather fly on Delta itself, but I can do a lot more at predictable rates with those American miles than I can with Delta. But that does not mean that SkyMiles are worthless.
It's just important to kind of figure out where SkyMiles fit in a broader strategy. And I think most importantly, that means that you need a strategy. That if your strategy for traveling more for less is just to earn and use Delta SkyMiles, you really kinda need to take things to the next level. Delta SkyMiles are not a silver bullet. It is not going to be the MVP any year.
It's more of a utility player of something that you can use when the time is right. Yeah. I think that's such a good point. I think I I really liked your answer at the top of the show when, you know, what would you do with 200,000 delta sky miles and your answer was just save them? I was like, oh, that's clever.
Oh, man. That's good. That's good. That's good. But it it is it it makes a lot of sense and, you know, just having sky miles is is something that I always try to do.
I I like to have just a little stash of them. It gets you out of a jam or helps you fly to, like we said, Denver or Phoenix or Orlando or just the on the short haul. And if you get lucky on something big or something Delta one, it's a a great idea. But then that leads us to your your final takeaway, Kyle, which I think is probably the most important one. I mean, I said it before, but let's hammer this point home and really beat this dead horse.
Flexibility is absolutely essential with Delta SkyMiles. If you can't be flexible, which I understand if you can't, not everybody has a luxury of being able to work around work schedules or work remote or take the kids out of school. And that is fine. But that means that if you don't have that flexibility, you really need to look beyond SkyMiles. Because without flexibility, Delta SkyMiles can actually be worthless.
You are trapped. You are paying whatever one Delta wants to charge you. And if you're not flexible, Delta is probably going to charge you a lot. Yeah. I I guess to close this, I I know that there are a lot of people out there who are pretty emotionally tied to Delta and their sky miles.
You know, we hear from them all the time at Thrifty Traveler, and I talk to them all the time out in the wild here in a a Delta hub where we're hub captives. This clearly is emotional for a lot of people. I want to tell you straight up, you are not an idiot for having sky miles. Sky miles can be very valuable if you know where and when to look and, like we mentioned, have some flexibility, and and you're not using them as your kind of principal form of award travel. But I I have lots of sky miles.
I earn them all the time. I'm I'm earning through their partners and all these, you know, good important ways that you can earn SkyMiles, like through Starbucks and Uber and and things like that. Why not pad pad your SkyMiles account when you can? But you should not be principally earning SkyMiles for most travelers, I would say. But, again, I I wanna stress, you know, earning SkyMiles is not dumb or bad travel.
You know, everything's different for everybody, and travel is always personal and emotional. I can't believe it took us 14 episodes for you to say you are not an idiot. And I'll note it wasn't to me, which is fair. It's more important that our listeners hear that than that I do. I know you think I'm an idiot.
It's fine. I'm over it. Our listeners are screaming into their screens about how much of an idiot I am, and I'm just trying to let them know the feeling is not mutual. Thanks for joining us. Let's help a listener out with a a SkyMiles question.
Eric from Salt Lake City asks, I just moved to Salt Lake City, and I'm looking to dive into the Delta SkyMiles ecosystem to take advantage of their robust presence at my new home airport. SkyMiles are famously easy to earn. What are your best tips for earning SkyMiles fast? I get to I get to help Eric out. Alright?
You can Eric. Help Eric. I I'm gonna I'm gonna start this with with saying, you need probably not one but two credit cards, and you're not going to be spending a lot of money on your Delta credit card. You need that Delta credit card for the benefit. So, you know, a free checked bag every time you fly.
And if as you climb the tiers of of, you know, platinum to reserve cards, maybe a companion certificate to use once a year or Delta Sky Club access with the reserve card. But you have that card because it gets you those benefits and that 15% off when you redeem your SkyMiles. But what you're doing instead is you're spending money on an American Express, not Delta, just Amex gold card, which, you know, most importantly earns four x, four four points per dollar at restaurants and at grocery stores in addition to other spending categories. It's just gonna earn you a lot more miles, and then that gives you the flexibility to have those points in that account, and you can send them wherever you want, including Delta, especially Delta when one of these great flash sales that we've been talking about comes up. And if it doesn't, you haven't put all your eggs in the Delta basket.
You've earned more points to begin with. You can turn them into more Delta SkyMiles than the SkyMiles you would have than constantly spending on your Delta Gold card. But you can also spend them in different ways if you if you wanna cross that bridge and you're not liking what you're seeing in Delta. Yeah. That's, we have a story on our website.
The best way to earn Delta SkyMiles is not with a Delta credit card, and that is extremely true. And more and more Delta flyers, should take advantage of of that, especially with that Amex gold card, which just earns so much, especially if you, you know, eat food like at grocery stores or at restaurants. The other recommendation I would give to, Eric here is just utilize those partners. This isn't crazy big earnings, but if you're riding in Ubers a lot, link your Uber account and your Delta SkyMiles account to earn SkyMiles for every ride. Same thing with Starbucks, which is, you know, a way that I kind of conveniently add a couple of SkyMiles, every month.
And then, SkyMiles shopping, their shopping portal, you can, install it on your browser so that when you go to a website where there's a little sky miles bonus, you can just click the button, and it'll load it up for you, and you can earn bonus sky miles that way. SkyMiles shopping also sign up for their emails. They send out an email probably once a week. It might even be more than that, just highlighting where their kind of bonus categories are. So if they're all of a sudden saying, you know, we're we're three x sky miles when you buy, an Apple product, this week only, and then you can kinda, plan your spending around some of those things.
And they have lots many more partners than that. I've seen them work with tons of different brands. So that's just a good way to kinda incrementally earn, but the best way to earn is through a sign up bonus and or using that that Amex gold card. But your SkyMiles card should not be your first swipe if you're trying to earn SkyMiles meaningfully. Do you agree?
100%. Alright. Hope that helps, Eric. If you want us to answer your question, email us at podcast@thriftytraveler.com, and your question might be featured on next week's show. Okay, Kyle.
It's your turn to put me on the spot yet again. What do you have? Gunnar, we've been talking about Delta SkyMiles on this show. I'll show all, forty plus minutes of it, and we're gonna keep doing it. If you could change one thing about the Delta SkyMiles program in order to benefit you selfishly and SkyMiles program in order to benefit you selfishly and personally, what one change would you make?
It's easy. I would make, SkyMiles bookings into the main cabin. Get rid of that lowest basic economy. Other airlines like American and United don't sell, their award fares into that basic economy fare. I I as most people know, I I don't like to fly basic economy.
I wish even if I had to pay a little more, just that regular main cabin rate, just not even being offered the basic economy would make me a little happier. And, of course, when you're flying main cabin abroad, you get some things like a bag and seat selection. And, when you're flying main cabin here in The US, that seat selection is really important. So, I would just get rid of kind of those lowest nastiest fares and, let Delta charge even if it's dynamically still, a main cabin rate. I think that that just makes things very simple, and it's something I'm jealous of when we get those American Airlines sales to Europe and it's 38,000 miles round trip.
And you look at it and you say, I know exactly what I'm getting when I book that rate. So I will say that would be my answer too. It's just get rid of basic economy sky miles rates. And, you know, a lot of the deals that we find, you know, those 27,000 sky mile round trip to Europe, those are basic economy. And the upshot of that is that when basic economy rates go down, so do main cabin.
You know, the the upgrade rate from main to or from basic to main is typically always the same whether, you know, that basic fare is 60,000 or 27,000. I would just like to not see that initial number and just have Delta treat this again like every other major US airline with the exception of JetBlue, which recently started doing this as well. And just don't don't mess around with basic fares when you have people redeeming SkyMiles. You you asked before whether I thought, Delta responded to some of the things that we wrote and said. I am 100% confident that Delta is never going to listen to this and say, hey.
You know what? Those two guys talking in that room, they got a point. Let's get rid of those basic economy award tickets. It's never gonna happen, but just know I'm on your side, Gunnar. I have a second answer too.
Very short. The companion pass that I get with the Delta SkyMiles platinum card, I would love to be able to use that on an award fair, and we can't. Oh. You have to pay cash to use those. Let me use my companion pass that I pay you for, please, Delta.
I I would love to be able to do that using That's a good one. Some of the sky miles I've piled into that account over the year. Do you have an answer for this besides the one I said? That that would have been my answer. It's just ditch the basic economy award tickets.
If they did that, I would be not happy but happier. Well, I think, we did a pretty good job being your jungle guides through the SkyMiles program today. I wanna hear from you if you think that we did or didn't. As I've said before, SkyMiles are a bit emotional for some people. But if you have feedback for us, send me a note at podcast@thriftytraveler.com.
We'd love to hear from you. That's gonna be it for the show today. Thanks so much for listening to the Thrifty Traveler podcast. Rate us five stars on your podcast platform of choice and like and subscribe to Thrifty Traveler on YouTube. The show's a lot of fun over there if you're not watching us already.
Also send this episode around to somebody that you know, somebody who needs a vacation or somebody who's a little too obsessed with their SkyMiles account. That might make them very angry though. Also, Kyle, tell us about the Thrifty Traveler podcast team. This episode was produced by our senior editor, Jackson Newman, and your favorite host, Gunnar Olson, who if you're mad at him for, ripping on SkyMiles for the last hour, you can reach at gunnar@thriftytraveler.com or podcast@thriftytraveler.com. This episode was edited by David Strutt, and our theme music is by Benjamin Tissot.
See you next time. See you.