Delta's "Pay With Miles" Feature

You should add about paying with miles for upgrades

Not available for Delta flights operated by partners.

I typically will use pay with miles from the AMEX card on trips where I have to go for a short period of time, but the prices are stupid (i.e. Rochester NY to NYC) Thereby taking a $220 ticket down to about $120, which seems more reasonable for a 40 minute flight.

The other pair with Miles feature that people don’t realize, is by using Delta Vacations. If you’re just buying flights through Delta’s website, as Pierre said above, you cannot use miles to book to partner airlines. If you book through Delta vacations, you can use miles, just like with the AMEX card (but you don’t have to have the AMEX card) and book Partner airlines.

I just did the Delta vacations thing for my trip to Australia next year. We’re going for 17 days, but I only need a total of four nights hotel in Sydney, So we booked Los Angeles to Melbourne on Virgin Australia The Business, and then Sydney to Los Angeles in Delta One, used some miles, and saved a significant amount of money (4900$ per person r/t total for Biz and the 4 nights, when the retail price of the tickets is going for almost $9000 alone).

Upgraded ATL > ORD from economy to first for $109 cash and MEM > ATL from economy to first for 7900 miles. Both pretty good deals and a great perk of having skymiles and flying with Delta!

@Brian - great tip on the Delta Vacations loophole!

One other perk of Pay with Miles that doesn't get a lot of attention, is if you're trying to do an MQM run you still get full credit as if you paid in cash.

Personally I never use pay with points because I agree with Lucky that better value can be had if redeeming on other SkyTeam or partner airlines. Skymiles also never expire, so there's no urgency to burn them now that their price seems to have bottomed-out for the foreseeable future. On Delta metal it's virtually impossible now to do better than $0.01/mile in value, even in premium cabins apart from flash sales. Being based in ATL I end up disproportionately on DL planes, though with creative routing I can get on KLM and AF on flights to/from Europe.

I have over 100,000 sky miles and tried to use them to upgrade to Comfort + on a previously booked trip. I was told that my class of fare did not allow me to dot his. I’m not about to pay $169.95 each way for a trip from Boston to Edinburgh but would have gladly used miles. This was my first time trying to use miles, so disappointed!

@Janet

You shouldn't be paying 16,900 miles each way for an almost nothing upgrade either. Even if you are taller than 6'6".

From the picture in this blog you can fly LAX-TPE on business class for "just 85,000 miles" one-way (can go up to 360,000 one-way on a bad day on DL) or just a little as 95,000 round trip on NH (F Delta)

@Eskimo, LAX-TPE is only flown by DL partner CI. As such, a one way business class award will cost 85,000 if available. You'll never 360,000 miles for a one way long haul business class award by flying DL partners.

@Eskimo...Delta wouldn’t even let me use miles, they wanted cash for that tiny upgrade. I declined.

Redeeming at 1c is usually dumb because unless you got your miles free (signup bonus) or from actual flying, then you should have put your spend on a 2% - 2.5% cash back card instead.

CSue - I earn Skymiles three ways

1) Sign-up bonus
2) Actual flying
3) Card spend for status (Delta Plat MQM boost)

Delta cards are used by those that regularly fly Delta on paid flights (whether paid for on the card itself, or more likely, by their employers).

I don't often fly on Delta but have earned miles with them off their shopping portals, hotel partnerships, and car rental partners. I'll usually use my miles to upgrade to business or Delta Comfort on my flights (which are all domestic).

@CSue
How you redeem miles has nothing to do with what card you use to purchase flights. I agree you shouldn't use the airline card to buy airfare; use a transferable points card that earns 3x to 5x, or the now-discontinued PenFed Travel Rewards card at 4.25% rebate, or the current PenFed Pathfinder at 3.4%, for example.

@Arlington Traveler

Wrong, it can cost more.
Who said anything about having to be nonstop from LAX-TPE.

Anyway, I'm trying to point out how Delta is extorting Skymiles member by having no transparency. You can fly between the city pair on NH and potentially would cost as little as 13% of what DL's extortion. That's paying over 7 times.

What happens if a reservation booked with "Pay With Miles" is cancelled by the traveler within the coronavirus exemption period? Can't find any answer anywhere on Delta.com