[Sticky] What's The Best Way To Redeem Delta SkyMiles For Maximum Value?

I agree that the one decent spot for redemptions is when booking partners that involve flights that do not involve the U.S. HOWEVER...as of late it is becoming really annoying with phantom space. On four different occasion over the last month, twice with Vietnam and twice with Air France, space has appeared Europe/Asia in J and when you get all the way through the booking and enter your credit card an error appears that, "The Space is No Longer Available." As a result I now have 90K transfer points sitting in a useless SkyMiles account.

Sky Pesos and value!? Now, that's a perfect oxymoron.

There is also a value of miles used per trip. That heavily favor economy class. The Eiffel Tower is the same no matter what class you flew to Paris.

Winter US domestic low fare routes can have nearly 2 cents per mile award value because taxes besides $5.60 are excluded by Delta's pricing. Some awards are as low as 2,500 miles each way!

One of the biggest mistakes I made in this game was transferring my first Amex sign up bonus to Delta. I quickly learned how little value SkyMiles have. I was finally able to squeeze good value out of them with a recent Delta One sell. Houston (IAH) to Brisbane, Australia (BNE) in February. The first segment is IAH to LAX in Delta domestic first class, then Delta One on the Airbus A350-900 from LAX to BNE. I redeemed 136,000 Delta SkyMiles and paid $32.50 in taxes and fees. The cpp was a little over 5 cents per point as the cash fare was a little over $7,000. The key takeaway is just wait for one of those biannual Delta One SkyMiles notifications and hope it works for you, but generally ignore Delta for the rest of the time. That’s what I did and I was able to get some value with my SkyMiles.

It also used to be great currency for flights from EU on AF&KL to Asia & Africa but the fees went up silently last year.

I recently redeemed 45,000 SkyMiles for economy class from the East Coast to Hawaii on a flight with a lot of unsold Delta One seats. As a DL million miler with lifetime Gold status, it was a breeze to clear the upgrade list into Delta One. The company I used to work for was based at a DL hub, so most of my business travel earned Sky Miles, even tho I would have preferred a different points currency.

You can probably only pull that one on Christmas eve.

Should have bought PowerBall, your odds are similar.

As useless as Skymiles generally are, there's one really terrific way to use them and I'm pretty surprised you didn't mention it: Delta has flash sales with some frequency, and they tend to offer a terrific use of miles. Over the years, we've done r/t to the Caribbean for 16k miles, r/t to SAN for 22k miles, and r/t to MEX for under 20k miles (among others).

While it’s true that VS will charge less miles than DL for an identical itinerary, I feel like it’s malpractice not to mention the ridiculous fees VS would also charge on all but a handful of partner carriers. If the choice for me is between 300,000 SkyMiles and $5.60, or 50,000 FlyingClub Points and $1750.00, you can rest assured I would much rather part ways with the SkyMiles.

How often do these sales happen? And is that 16,000 in economy or business?

Just booked an August trip to Iceland with AA and Finnair: 57.5k each way, in business class for every segment. Yes, I had to be flexible about dates, and I am flying via HEL, which is a bit out of the way (the only other OneWorld option is via LHR which requires an overnight and stupid fuel surcharges).

Good redemption value what keeps me loyal to AA and OneWorld. My SkyMiles just sit there gathering dust.

cpp

find Sky Miles are great redemption value for Garuda Indonesia

Try calling. An agent was able to book when the website errored out.

Your post didn’t mention the most pernicious aspect of SkyMiles: it’s the only mileage currency (at least among the big three, but maybe in the entire world) that books into basic economy for award tickets. This is especially horrible since award tickets are about rewarding you for your loyalty and are supposed to be more flexible than cash tickets. This also means you don’t get DL lounge access on these award tickets.

I realize it is the exception and not the rule but my wife and I got Delta One tickets from Seattle to Taipei for 87,000 Skymiles last February. It was a flash sale and I had to leave 2 days earlier than originally planned (day I had planned to leave was around 350,000 one way). Other than that I burn mine on domestic flights. Lifetime Platinum w 2.5 million butt in seat miles but rarely fly DL anymore

I paid 39,000 Virgin points and $400 for upper class IAD-LHR. I consider that a great deal.

I find good value sometimes using points to upgrade a flight to a higher fare class (with the offer coming after booking)

I've found good value with SkyMiles on domestic economy bookings, especially roundtrip, and using my 15 percent discount for the credit card. I don't keep a big balance of SkyMiles, however.

It's 2026. FYI.

My best flash sale grab was a roundtrip JFK to Frankfurt, Germany in economy (before basic was even a thing, so I was able to choose my seats) for 24000 Skymiles!

I’m booked on an award roundtrip JFK-LAX-AKL early next year and I was able to choose to not book in basic. No way I’m doing that trip without lounge access!

Yes but you have to pay extra miles for non-basic. No other full service carrier has basic economy award tickets as far as I know.

Hands down the worst program I have ever been in keeping it short
Need a hundred reasons?
I’ll also state that historically no program gouged it members with predatory practices like Delta leading other programs to follow suit and copy them with massive devaluations of points.Just a horrible company despite some getting lucky when a decent redemption pops up.Every airline program is worse off for members today and DELTA led the way
I avoid them entirely.Refuse to support a company that rips off the flying public and its own members.Just one opinion out there