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How to redeem Delta miles to get the best price on award flights

  • Meghan Hunter

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    Delta makes it easy for people looking to use up a stash of miles to search for award seats on its website, and you don’t even have to log in to book award flights on most of its partner airlines. But there are a couple of tools and tricks for finding the best deal.

    You can earn Delta miles with cards like the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card, Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card, or Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card, or by transferring American Express Membership Rewards points.

    Note that Delta does not publish an award chart. Partner awards always come out at the lowest price, but Delta will pass on fuel surcharges.

    Here are some tips for making the most of your miles:

    There are a few tricks to getting the best deal for those Delta miles. (Photo by emperorcosar/Shutterstock.)

    How to use Delta miles

    You need a Delta loyalty account to redeem miles. You can find how to create a Delta account here.

    Things to know include:

    When you have enough miles accumulated, you can use them for award travel. Here’s how:

    Delta flights

    The most obvious use for Delta miles is for Delta award flights. The airline makes it super simple to find a seat.

    To start, navigate to Delta.com. Right at the top, enter where you want to go and when. Click “Advanced Search,” and in the menu that appears, select “Shop with Miles” to see award flights.

    You can also choose your cabin. The options are:

    Not every award flight will have every seat available. If the option you want isn’t there, the search will default to the next closest ticket type. For example, if you pick Delta One but there aren’t any seats on that route, you’ll see first-class awards instead.

    Click the arrow to run your search.

    On the next screen, you can filter and customize your trip.

    You’ll see available awards for the week of your travel date. As you can see, award prices are all over the place in this sample itinerary from Austin, Texas, to New York-LaGuardia. Prices are as low as 9,500 Delta miles each way in basic economy and go up to 22,000 Delta miles.

    On this same page, you can modify your search and choose to see only Delta flights, results with partner flights included or prices in a different cabin. If your dates are flexible, you can see award prices across a five-week span with the “Price Calendar.” If you don’t want to connect, you can select nonstop flights only.

    It’s a good idea to check award prices over a longer span to get a sense of the best deals.

    Folks want to know they’re getting the best price and Delta doesn’t always make it easy. Prices vary wildly by route and date. I recommend running test searches across a few different times of year to see what normal pricing is like.

    In our example, it looks like 9,500 Delta miles is as good as it gets from Austin to New York. Click the date you want to fly to see the list of flights.

    Here again, you can click “Filters” to add more criteria to the search. You can choose which airport to connect in (helpful if you can’t stand connecting in certain airports, like Atlanta), how many connections you’ll allow and even how long of a connection you want.

     

    Finally, you can sort by:

    You’ll find those options under “Sort By” in a dropdown menu.

    When you click “Details,” you’ll see the flight number, connection time and plane type. Plus you can see if there’s Wi-Fi, outlets, and inflight entertainment on your flight(s).

    Another cool trick is to click “Seats” to see how many open seats are available on the flight you want. Folks love this because if you’re booking multiple awards, you can book a seat next to your travel partner or family member.

    Last, select the flight you want. On the next screen, you’ll review the information. If all looks good, hit “Continue” to book your flight and complete the purchase.

    Watch for Delta Flash Sales

    Delta has frequent award sales and promotions for deals on its own flights. To see the latest offers, check our updated Delta award sale page here.

    In the past, we’ve seen deals that include:

    Flash sales are updated every Thursday.

    Delta partner flights

    You’re not limited to flying on Delta. Because they’re part of the SkyTeam alliance, you can book award tickets on:

    Delta also has partnerships with airlines that aren’t part of an alliance, including:

    That gives you 30+ airlines to choose from.  You can book award flights online for every partner except:

    For these, you need to call to book your award seats.

    For all others, you can search on the Delta award site. Partner awards are always displayed at the lowest price, so you don’t have to click around to check prices. Note that Delta does not have access to first-class seats for its partners — only business, coach and economy plus, in some cases.

    Delta will show you other routing options, too and it’s always easy to know which partner airline you’re booking because it’s noted within all the search result boxes. That said, it’s a good idea to check the fuel surcharges. In some cases, they can amount to several hundred dollars in add-on fees, so you want to avoid them if possible.

    In general, booking partner award seats is one of the best uses of Delta miles because you can save thousands of miles by looking for partner flights.

    It’s almost always a better value to fly a partner airline internationally rather than flying Delta when using miles. I searched business-class tickets from Atlanta to Amsterdam in May and June 2020, and as usual, got prices all over the place. Delta wants 80,000 to 320,000 miles for its own flights. But partner KLM is offering seats for only 75,000 Delta miles each way. Considering these tickets are ~$9,000, that’s a pretty good deal.

    Upgrade your seat

    When you book a paid or award seat, you’ll sometimes see an option to redeem Delta miles for an upgrade to the next class of service. In general, it’s not the best way to use Delta miles. But if you have lots of miles, you might consider it. Each mile is worth ~1 cent toward an upgraded seat.

    Use Pay With Miles to book flights without blackout dates

    You can use your miles at a rate of 1 cent each to book paid flights on the Delta website when you have a Delta Gold, Platinum, or Reserve Credit Card from American Express. Only Delta and Delta Connection flights are eligible (not partner flights) and you can redeem in increments of 5,000 miles.

    You can use miles to pay for all or part of your ticket, and because these are paid (not award) tickets, you’ll earn Delta miles when you take the flight.

    Here’s our guide to Delta Pay With Miles for more information.

    Other Delta services or merchandise

    Delta makes it easy to use miles to pay for ancillary fees and add-on services, like:

    I don’t recommend ever using miles for fees or merchandise, as it’s usually a raw deal

    You can also use miles to shop for merchandise or magazine subscriptions. Here, your miles are usually worth 1 cent each or less. That’s definitely not a good value, so we recommend saving your miles for award travel instead.

    Best way to earn Delta miles

    The quickest way to earn Delta miles is through a big welcome offer on one of the cobranded Delta Amex credit cards. See below for current welcome offers:

    Small-business owners can consider the Delta Amex business cards, though they don’t have increased offers at the moment.

    Bottom Line

    It’s incredibly easy to use Delta miles. The best uses tend to be partner awards for international travel and flash sales for Delta flights. Most other times, award prices fluctuate based on demand and route, and value tends to hover near the 1-cent mark.

    If you need help, you can call Delta to search and book your award for free, as there’s no longer an award booking fee by phone.

    Although you can use Delta miles for upgrades, Sky Club memberships, merchandise and more, you’ll get the best deal using them for award travel.

    With a little finesse, you can unlock the lowest prices and in many cases, save thousands of miles.

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    Editorial Note: We're the Million Mile Secrets team. And we're proud of our content, opinions and analysis, and of our reader's comments. These haven’t been reviewed, approved or endorsed by any of the airlines, hotels, or credit card issuers which we often write about. And that’s just how we like it! :)