Delta One Business Class Award Sale: Worth A Look, Maybe

AA seems to be catching up fast: BNA-BCN with a 5.17 AM departure and 8h 56 min connection at MIA in mid January is 400k! Not award sale though, I hasten to add......

forgot to specify that the above is ONE WAY!

What do you mean maybe? This is DELTA we're talking about

Delta SkyMiles have never been useless. People here just can't wrap their heads around that it's perfectly normal and expected for the most premium company (in any field) to charge a premium for their services and/or product. Simple economics.

If AA was half the airline DL is today, do you really think their points program would look so attractive?

What does Luigi Mangione think about this?

Gary Leff calls it theft.

“If you want to get the best deal possible redeeming SkyMiles for first and business class, the key is for travel to not originate or terminate in the United States. “

Don’t you mean originate, terminate or traverse through North America?

@ Daniel B. -- Oh, no doubt AA has a lot of awards with high pricing, but the idea is that there are consistently opportunities to redeem for long haul flights in premium cabins at a reasonable cost. That simply doesn't exist with SkyMiles, at least for travel to or from the United States.

@Lucky: of course, I fully agree with you, in fact I have 10 trips scheduled for 2025 all with 57.5k o/w business class tickets :-)). Even the BNA-BCN I got for 57.5k.

@ JD -- You can potentially get a good value if connecting in the US, like my recent SkyMiles redemption from Santiago to Mexico City via Atlanta:
https://onemileatatime.com/reviews/delta-one-business-class-a350/

Sure, but those don’t have to be mutually exclusive. You can be a premium airline and still offer something financially enticing to customers.

I think Air France is a good example of this. Nobody would consider their redemptions to be outstanding, but they at least offer some attractive deals now and then. It keeps the program fun and interesting.

Thanks for the info! I just rebooked two tickets to Korea and got a refund of 120,000 miles!

Looked at the dates of travel that would work for me and the places I want to go because of existing travel and found that again there was nothing worth rescheduling. Again. As usual.

I consider 50K Flying Blue redemptions on AF metal to be outstanding.

It's wild to me that an airline would actually advertise 510K miles as any sort of deal. Even if they're 'conditioning' people to think J redemptions should be expensive, at 1cpp, I'd say $5,100 for MIA-BRU-MIA would be expensive. You should be able to beat that anytime on a litany of carriers with an experience much better than DL 767s.

If you can get them! These used to be plentiful at one time. Now may be one seat on one flight at release of schedule.
Having said that, I have been able to get them at 50k with lots of flexibility. And even more than one seat.
Air France still has good value though it is beginning to change.

This is clearly a return of the Delta One "flash sale" that Delta used to run for European travel in both the Spring and the Fall on a somewhat consistent basis. The last time they did this was in 2022, which got a lot of people trips to Europe. This looks similar, albeit at prices that are about 50K-60K above what they did in 2022. If I recall, I redeemed to Barcelona at about 148K round trip in September 2022; now they seem to want 210K for most destinations. Nevertheless, at roughly ~100K each way from NYC to a good amount of EU destinations, this is probably the best way people are going to get value out of Skymiles when redeeming Delta One to Europe, which is obviously a very popular vacation. I am glad to see these flash sales return...

This is great! Just rebooked ICN-SEA-PDX in April and went from originally being booked on a a339 in prem econ for 125k, to D1 on newly upgauged a359 for 110k.

One of the better deals I have seen is JFK to MAD for 166K round trip in March (all prices assume 15% discount for holding a Delta Amex).

Oh Tim,
do you really have to pretend like this. Your writing style is all over this.

Are you this sad? I mean. Everyone knows you are. but pretend for your own sake

Ive used delta miles for Europe to Australia. I think 90k miles. Pretty decent at that price. Lots of Vietnam airlines availability.

This sale seems decent to me, especially with the 15% discount factored in. Obviously not the best deal on the planet, but the relatively good availability takes away a lot of stress.

I may end up redeeming for a one-way with Delta and then use Finnair points for the return flight with JAL. Mix and match.

Ben - You can fly from a number of Delta hubs (JFK, MSP, DTW in particular) to a number of European cities (MAD, ZHR, LIS, DUB, BRU) for 196K round trip. With a Delta credit card, that is reduced to 166K round trip, or 83K each way. Your redemption from Santiago to Mexico City via Atlanta was 65.8K - but required that you originate in Santiago, and includes a frankly out of the way connection in Atlanta. I would argue that 83K from the US to Europe non-stop is a better "value" for most people than a 65.8K connection from Chile to Mexico via the Southeastern US....

It's a testament to the stupidity of the general public that Delta can generate billions in revenue each year from such a god-awful reward currency.

All Delta is saying to the world is that their currency and their word is trash.
I believe the !

We can agree this is an av topic. But, we all know Delta is this way. We really don't need to be reminded. So, let's not give Delta another minute of our mental energy. Let's simply move on and talk about happier and more productive topics in the hobby.

the weird takes in this thread are more interesting than the thread topic itself is

This is a respectable sale for TPAC. 85k with the Amex discount is roughly inline with most other programs.

This has a good deal for people needing specific dates since it's wide-open. This will help their TPE LFs immensely (even if it's not super lucrative to do this, it will cut into the competition). The HND sale is obviously done to help with the Japan off-season since it ends right before the peak in March.

I think the more interesting conversation is how / why DL continues to command incredible loyalty and financial performance despite the obvious gaps in value relative to competitors. I don’t get it but I sure do respect it.

Then you have to factor in a 15% discount so that award sounds halfway decent, essentially means it’s not a decent award. They advertising a round-trip award ticket to Tokyo for 400,000 miles. That’s just despicable, but I do not want to interrupt the parade of the Delta fanboys

Bingo. The availability is what helps elevate this deal.