Delta SkyMiles Program: Everything You Need to Know

Delta SkyMiles, the frequent-flyer program of Delta Air Lines, is one of the simplest rewards programs in the airline industry. Thanks in part to the fact that Delta is the second-largest airline in North America by fleet size and passenger footfall, the carrier has a wealth of award flight options to a wide variety of destinations across a large range of price points.

Unfortunately, Delta SkyMiles was also the first loyalty program to introduce dynamic award pricing, which has caused its currency to undergo a serious devaluation and has started an industry-wide shift toward dynamic award pricing.

To make matters worse, Delta recently introduced some major changes to its elite status program that will make it considerably harder to achieve elite status without spending a lot of money and harder to access their coveted Delta Sky Club lounges.

But it’s not all bad. Delta also has made some customer-friendly changes to the program, allowing members to earn Medallion Qualifying Dollars (MQDs), the program’s elite status metric, on car rentals, hotel stays, vacation bookings and credit card spending.

On top of that, earning SkyMiles is fairly easy between spending on co-branded Delta credit cards, transferring American Express Membership Rewards points and booking flights with Delta and its long list of airline partners. Delta is a SkyTeam member, which means that you can earn and redeem SkyMiles with any of the other airlines in the alliance.

There are many ways to use your SkyMiles outside of just booking award flights. However, you’ll typically get the most value out of your miles when redeeming through one of Delta’s frequent SkyMiles Deals.

Let’s take a look at everything you need to know about the Delta SkyMiles program from elite status and credit cards to earning and redeeming miles.

Delta SkyMiles Partners

As mentioned, Delta is a member of the SkyTeam alliance, which includes more than a dozen global airlines. SkyTeam carriers serve nearly 1,150 destinations across six continents, meaning that you can earn SkyMiles pretty much regardless of where you’re traveling.

Here are the other SkyTeam partners:

Delta also has partnerships with airlines outside of SkyTeam, giving you a ton of options for earning or redeeming miles even if you aren’t flying with SkyTeam carriers.

Here are Delta’s non-SkyTeam partners:

With all of these partners, earnings and redemption rates will vary from airline to airline, so it’s best to do some research and find out which of Delta’s partners offer the best rates.

Delta Medallion Elite Status

For those who frequently fly on Delta and its partners, Delta has its own elite status program that can provide savings and extra comforts. However, whereas you used to be able to earn Delta elite status by flying a certain number of miles or segments, the program recently eliminated those metrics. Now, starting on Jan. 1, 2024, the only way to earn Delta elite status is by earning Medallion Qualifying Dollars (MQDs).

Delta SkyMiles members can continue to earn Medallion Qualifying Miles (MQMs) through the end of 2023. Any MQMs that roll over from 2023 to 2024 can be converted either to miles or to MQDs (whichever you choose) or a combination of both. Unfortunately, rollover MQMs will be converted to miles at a rate of 2:1 and converted to MQDs at a rate of 20:1. Both conversions will seriously devalue your MQMs, but you don’t have any other options.

These changes have upset many Delta loyalists who believed that the SkyMiles program has become more of a spending rewards program than a loyalty program, and that the MQM conversion ratio is unfair. On the bright side, these changes have made Medallion tier qualification a whole lot easier to understand.

The program has four elite status tiers: Silver Medallion, Gold Medallion, Platinum Medallion and Diamond Medallion. You can earn status by accruing a certain number of MQDs, which you can earn by spending money on flights with Delta and its partner airlines, spending money on co-branded Delta credit cards and making bookings through Delta Car Rentals, Delta Stays and Delta Vacations.

Here’s how many MQDs you’ll earn with each of these methods:

• 1 MQDs per $1 spent on the ticket price of Delta-marketed flights operated by Delta or one of its partner airlines (excluding taxes and fees, basic economy and similar fares)
• 1 MQDs per $1 spent on completed rentals through Delta Car Rentals
• 1 MQDs per $1 spent on completed hotel stays and vacation rentals through Delta Stays (excluding gratuities, rooms service and other booking charges)
• 1 MQDs per $1 spent on vacation bookings through Delta Vacations
• 1 MQDs per $10 spent on the Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card or the Delta SkyMiles® Reserve Business American Express Card
• 1 MQDs per $20 spent on a Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card or Delta SkyMiles® Platinum Business American Express Card

To make it easier to track your progress toward elite status, Delta has announced that it will be adding a SkyMiles Status Tracker tool to its website starting in 2024 that will allow you to see how many MQDs you’ve racked up at any time.

Once you reach an elite status tier, you’ll retain it through the following calendar year. For instance, if you earn Gold Medallion status in March 2022, you’ll keep that status through the end of 2023. However, if you fall just short of reaching a status tier before the end of the year, your MQDs won’t roll over to the next year, and you’ll have to start from scratch.

Any MQDs that you earn in excess of what is needed to reach a specific elite status won’t roll over to your next tier.

Let’s take a look at how many MQDs you have to earn to achieve each elite status and the perks that come along with each status tier.

Silver Medallion Elite Status

Silver Medallion is the lowest tier in Delta’s elite status program and reached when you earn 6,000 MQDs. As a Silver Medallion member, you’ll receive:

• Unlimited complimentary Comfort+ and first-class upgrades on domestic flights and flights from the U.S. to Canada, the Caribbean and Central America 24 hours before your departure
• First checked bag free for you and up to eight travel companions
• Priority check-in and priority boarding
• 7X miles per dollar on Delta flights
• 1,000 bonus miles per qualifying car rental with Hertz

Gold Medallion Elite Status

To achieve Gold Medallion status, you’ll need to earn 12,000 MQDs. Gold Medallion members will enjoy the following benefits:

• Complimentary first-class upgrades on domestic flights and short-haul international flights 72 hours before your departure.
• Complimentary upgrades to Comfort+
• First checked bag free for you and up to eight travel companions
• Waived same-day confirmed seating changes
• Sky Priority® suite of services including priority check-in, priority security line access, expedited baggage service and Sky Priority boarding
• 8X miles per dollar on Delta flights
• 1,000 bonus miles per qualifying car rental with Hertz
• Five Star® status in the Hertz Gold Plus Rewards program

Platinum Medallion Elite Status

To reach Platinum Medallion status, you’ll need to earn 18,000 MQDs. Once you achieve Platinum Medallion in Delta’s program, you’ll enjoy the following benefits:

• Unlimited first-class upgrades that clear 120 hours before your departure
• Your pick of a Choice Benefit. Options include four Regional Upgrade Certificates, 20,000 bonus SkyMiles or the ability to gift Silver Medallion status to a friend or family member.
• First checked bag free for you and up to eight travel companions
• Waived same-day confirmed seating changes
• Sky Priority® suite of services
• 9X miles per dollar on Delta flights
• 1,250 bonus miles per qualifying car rental with Hertz
• President’s Circle® status in the Hertz Gold Plus Rewards program

Diamond Medallion Elite Status

Diamond Medallion status is the highest public elite status that you can hold with Delta and is reached when you earn 35,000 MQDs. This status tier comes with a ton of valuable benefits, including:

• Unlimited complimentary upgrades to Comfort+ shortly after ticketing, to first class clearing 120 hours before your departure and to domestic Delta One® on the day of your departure
• Your pick of three Choice Benefits. Options include eight Regional Upgrade Certificates, four Global Upgrade Certificates, a combination of two Global Upgrade Certificates and four Regional Upgrade Certificates, 25,000 bonus SkyMiles for yourself or someone else, the ability to gift Gold Medallion status to a friend or family member, Delta Sky Club® membership options or a $200 Delta travel voucher.
• First checked bag free for you and up to eight travel companions
• Waived same-day confirmed seating changes
• Sky Priority® suite of services
• 11X miles per dollar on Delta flights
• 1,250 bonus miles per qualifying car rental with Hertz
• President’s Circle® status in the Hertz Gold Plus Rewards program
• Complimentary Clear Plus membership

There’s another elite status tier above Diamond Medallion called Delta 360° that is invitation-only.

Million Miler Status

Although Delta has gotten rid of Medallion Qualifying Miles (MQMs) as a metric for earning elite status, the SkyMiles program still rewards members who fly more than 1 million miles over the course of their time as a SkyMiles member.

You can check how many qualifying miles you’ve flown on the right-hand side of the My SkyMiles page by clicking on the “View Million Miler Qualifications” button.

Each time you reach a Million Miler tier, you’ll be entitled to special bag tags, Complimentary Medallion status (regardless of how many MQDs you earn in that year) and your choice from a curated selection of gifts.

Here are the Medallion statuses you’ll be entitled to at each Million Miler tier.

So, to be clear, if you fly more than 6 million miles with Delta, then you’ll enjoy Diamond Medallion status for the rest of your life regardless of how many MQDs you earn. However, those 6 million miles are equal to more than 240 journeys around the Earth, so it’s going to be rather difficult to accumulate that many miles.

Status Match Challenge

If you currently have elite status with another frequent-flyer program and you’re thinking of switching loyalty, Delta will match your status for three months so that you can get a sense of the benefits.

To quality for the Status Match Challenge, you must:

• Not have received a status match from Delta within the past three years.
• Have elite status from another qualifying airline.
• Be able to prove that you have this status and that you earned it by flying (and not through another status match).

If approved, you’ll be given three months of elite status with Delta. However, you’ll be enrolled in a status challenge that gives you the opportunity to extend your status by hitting certain flying and spending milestones within a specific time period.

Earning Delta SkyMiles

There are several ways to earn Delta SkyMiles, the most obvious being to fly with Delta or one of its partner airlines. However, you also can earn miles by spending on co-branded Delta credit cards, by making purchases through the SkyMiles Shopping portal or participating in the SkyMiles Dining program.

Flying Delta-Operated Flights

When you book a flight through Delta, you’ll earn SkyMiles on the base fare of your ticket. It’s absolutely free to sign up for the Delta SkyMiles program, and miles don’t expire, so there’s no reason not to enroll in the program and start earning rewards on your flights, even if you never achieve elite status.

However, having elite status means that you’ll be able to rack up SkyMiles significantly faster. Here are the earnings rates for each status tier:

• General member – 5X miles per dollar
• Silver Medallion – 7X miles per dollar
• Gold Medallion – 8X miles per dollar
• Platinum Medallion – 9X miles per dollar
• Diamond Medallion – 11X miles per dollar

For instance, if you book a flight for $300 before taxes, you’ll earn 1,500 SkyMiles if you don’t have elite status. If you have status, you’ll earn 2,100 SkyMiles on the same flight as a Silver Medallion member and 3,300 SkyMiles as a Diamond Medallion member.

Booking Through Partner Airlines

Another way to earn SkyMiles is to book flights with Delta’s partner airlines. However, there are two different options for booking with partner airlines, and the option that you choose will determine how many SkyMiles you receive.

First of all, you can book flights with partner airlines through Delta’s website and earn SkyMiles on the base fare that you paid (just like with Delta-operated flights), even though the flight is operated by another airline.

On the other hand, you can book the flight directly with a partner airline and then add your Delta SkyMiles account number at checkout. However, when you book this way, the number of SkyMiles that you earn will be based on the distance flown, which partner you’re flying, booking class and whether you have elite status.

It’s probably best to compare both booking methods before purchasing your ticket because the difference in the miles you’ll receive can be quite large in some cases. You can check SkyMiles earnings rates for all partner airlines on this page.

Spending with Delta Co-Branded Credit Cards

Apart from booking flights with Delta or its partner airlines, the best way to earn SkyMiles is by signing up for one of Delta’s co-branded credit cards. Annual fees for these cards are either $0, $99, $250 or $550, so there’s a card for everyone regardless of how often you fly with Delta.

American Express is a sole issuer of Delta cards, and there are four personal cards and three business cards that allow you to earn SkyMiles. Here is a breakdown of all the cards.

The Delta SkyMiles Platinum and the Delta SkyMiles Platinum Business cards used to allow cardholders to access Delta Sky Club lounges, but these cards will no longer grant access to these lounges starting on Jan. 1, 2024. It’s also worth noting that travelers booked in basic economy class will no longer be granted access to Delta Sky Club lounges starting on Jan. 1, 2024.

Transfer Partners

One of the best ways to boost your Delta SkyMiles balance is to transfer points from American Express Membership Rewards. Amex points convert to SkyMiles at a ratio of 1:1 and can be transferred in increments of 1,000 points.

It’s worth noting that American Express levies a fee of $0.0006 per point when transferring to U.S.-based frequent-flyer programs (with a maximum fee of $99 per transaction) to offset the federal excise tax. So, if you were to transfer 50,000 points to Delta SkyMiles, you’d have to pay a fee of $30, which is fairly significant.

It’s also possible to transfer several hotel rewards points to the Delta SkyMiles program. Unfortunately, the transfer ratios are pretty unfavorable.

Here are the hotel rewards points that you can transfer to the Delta SkyMiles program and their respective transfer ratios:

• ALL – Accor Live Limitless – 2:1
• Hilton Honors – 10:1
• IHG One Rewards – 5:1
• Marriott Bonvoy – 3:1
• Radisson Rewards – 10:1

As you can see, you’re better off spending these hotel points through their native programs than converting them to Delta SkyMiles. However, if you don’t have any use for hotel points or you need to top off your SkyMiles account for a specific redemption, then converting hotel points might be worth considering.

Booking Hotel Stays and Vacation Rentals

Delta SkyMiles members can earn 2X miles per dollar spent on hotel stays and vacation rentals through Delta Stays, Delta’s own hotel booking portal. With Delta Stays (powered by Expedia), you can simply enter your desired destination and travel dates and you’ll be presented with a list of results that match your search query. You’ll earn SkyMiles once you book and complete the stay.

You also can earn SkyMiles on Airbnb reservations. To do so, simply visit deltaairbnb.com and enter your SkyMiles number. When booking with Airbnb, you’ll earn 1X SkyMile per dollar spent. So, more expensive stays could earn you a decent sum of miles.

You also can choose to earn Delta SkyMiles directly for hotel stays with certain companies. To do so, select Delta SkyMiles as your rewards program of choice and enter your SkyMiles membership number when making your booking.

The table below includes all of Delta’s hotel partners and their respective earnings rates.

It’s worth noting that if you elect to earn SkyMiles on your hotel stay, you’ll be forfeiting the opportunity to earn that hotel’s native rewards currency. So, before you choose to earn SkyMiles on hotel nights, you should assess whether or not you’d be better off earning Hotel points instead.

Renting Cars

Delta also has several partnerships with auto rental companies that allow you to earn SkyMiles for eligible rentals. The following table includes all of Delta’s car rental partners and their respective SkyMiles earnings rates.

Delta Vacations

Delta Vacations allows you to earn SkyMiles while booking vacation packages that include transportation, accommodation and more. When making bookings with Delta Vacations, you’ll earn:

• 1,000 SkyMiles per person on bookings of up to $4,999
• 5,000 SkyMiles per person on bookings of $5,000 to $9,999
• 10,000 SkyMiles per person on bookings of $10,000 or more

You’ll also earn even more miles from the flight portion of your vacation package.

Spending Through SkyMiles Shopping Portal

Believe it or not, you can earn SkyMiles (and most other airline miles) without ever stepping foot on a plane. Most airlines have their own shopping portals that reward you with miles for purchases, and Delta is no different.

If you want to earn SkyMiles for online shopping, you must register an account on the SkyMiles Shopping portal using your SkyMiles account number. Search for your favorite brands or products from more than 1,000 stores and earn miles for making purchases.

The specific number of SkyMiles you’ll earn per dollar depends on the merchant. It’s also worth looking out for stores that offer bonus miles as this can be a great way to get a bang for your buck.

Typically, the SkyMiles you earn from your purchases will post within three to five days. However, depending on the store, it can take up to 15 days.

Eating with SkyMiles Dining

If you’re already a member of Delta SkyMiles, you should absolutely sign up for SkyMiles Dining. This program rewards you with up to 5X miles per dollar spent at any participating restaurants in your area.

All you have to do is sign up with your SkyMiles account number and link any credit or debit card. Search for participating restaurants in your area and start earning SkyMiles while you’re dining.

However, it’s worth noting that other loyalty programs also allow you to earn miles or points for dining (including American Airlines AAdvantage, JetBlue TrueBlue, Southwest Rapid Rewards, United MileagePlus, IHG One Rewards, Hilton Honors and Marriott Bonvoy), some of which offer a greater return than Delta SkyMiles. And, since you can enroll only one card in one rewards network-operated dining rewards program, you might want to weigh your options before linking your card to SkyMiles Dining.

Riding with Lyft

You can earn Delta SkyMiles for riding with Lyft by linking your SkyMiles account to your Lyft account. When you book a ride through the platform, you’ll earn 1X mile per dollar spent on everyday rides and 2X miles per dollar spent on rides to the airport.

Once you’re linked, you don’t have to do anything to claim your miles. Your earnings will be automatically credited to your SkyMiles account.

Ordering with Instacart

Delta has a partnership with Instacart that allows you to earn 1X mile per dollar spent on eligible orders.

As a SkyMiles basic member, Silver Medallion member or Gold Medallion member, you’re also entitled to one free month of Instacart Express. If you’re a Diamond or Platinum Medallion member, you’re entitled to three free months of Instacart Express.

Redeeming Delta SkyMiles

Aside from booking award flights, there are many ways to redeem your SkyMiles. However, some of these redemption options provide far less value than others. In general, your best bet for getting the most value out of your SkyMiles will be to purchase an award flight directly through Delta’s website.

Despite that, we’re going to look at the many ways you can redeem your SkyMiles and how much value you can get out of each option.

Book Award Flights with Delta

Booking Delta award flights is probably the easiest and most straightforward way to spend SkyMiles, and luckily it’s one of the ways that usually provides the most value as well.

Unfortunately, Delta has removed its award charts and moved to a dynamic pricing model. This means that you’ll need to actually search for your desired flight on Delta’s website to know how many miles you’ll need to book it.

There is, generally, a correlation between the cash cost of a flight and its redemption rate. However, you should still calculate the value of the redemption vs. the cash rate.

If you aren’t looking for any flight in particular, you should keep up to date with Delta’s award sale page. The airline consistently posts limited-time award deals that are usually of great value. These deals change fairly frequently, so it’s worth checking back every few weeks or so.

If you do need to fly to a specific destination on a specific date, you can head over to Delta’s website and choose to display the price in miles when searching for your flight. Again, if the value of the award flight is significantly less than 1.5 cents per mile, you might want to pay cash instead and hold onto your miles for a rainy day.

Pay With Miles

If you have a Delta Amex card, you have the option to pay for Delta flights with a combination of miles and cash using the Pay with Miles feature. To do so, you simply need to search for flights through Delta’s website and find a flight that is “Pay with Miles” eligible. Then, you can apply your miles to reduce the cash price of a flight.

SkyMiles are worth 1 cent apiece when used to Pay with Miles. The minimum number of miles that you can use is 5,000, which reduces the cash price of your flight by $50. You can redeem 10,000 miles to reduce the cost by $100, 15,000 miles to reduce the cost by $150 and so on.

To use the Pay with Miles feature, you must pay a cash portion of the fare with your Delta Amex card.

Book Award Flights with Partners

Delta is a member of SkyTeam, meaning that you can use SkyMiles to book flights operated by other alliance members. In addition, Delta also has several other partner airlines with which you can book flights using SkyMiles.

It’s also possible to use your SkyMiles to purchase multiple segments of the same trip from multiple carriers. For instance, you might be able to book one segment of the trip with Delta, one segment with Aeroméxico and the final one with Aerolíneas Argentinas.

Unfortunately, Delta’s partner awards have seen their fair share of devaluations of the past few years. Specifically, redemption rates for award flights operated by Virgin Atlantic and Saudia between the United States and the Middle East have gone up significantly in recent years.

Award flights between the United States and North Africa and India have increased in price, too. On top of that, Delta has added close-in booking surcharges and increased rates for many partner award flights departing from the United States.

Still, with a thorough search, you can find some partner awards that offer great value when booked with SkyMiles.

Upgrading or Changing Delta Flights

Another way to spend your SkyMiles is to upgrade an existing ticket. If your ticket is eligible for an upgrade, you’ll see an option to upgrade with either miles or cash in your reservation details page.

Upgrade costs can vary heavily by flight, so you should always calculate the cost of the upgrade to see if it’s worth it.

You also may be able to use your SkyMiles to pay for services, such as ticket change fees, selecting preferred seats, same-day confirmed fees or external ticket charges. In most cases, you’ll need to call Delta Reservations at 1-800-221-1212 and request that you use SkyMiles to pay for your desired change.

Delta Sky Club Membership

Not only did recent changes have made it more difficult to access Delta Sky Club lounges with Delta Amex credit cards, Sky Clubs don’t sell single-entry passes, either. However, you can pay for a yearly Sky Club membership with either cash or miles.

The following table includes the two Delta Sky Club membership tiers and their respective annual prices and benefits.

As you can see, you’ll effectively get a redemption value of 1 cent per mile if you choose to redeem your SkyMiles for a Sky Club membership. Whether or not it’s worth it to pay that many miles (or cash) depends on how often you visit Sky Club lounges and what you consume while you’re there.

One interesting way to spend your SkyMiles is to redeem them for premium drinks at Sky Club lounges. Of course, Sky Club access comes with complimentary wine, beer, spirits and cocktails. However, the airport lounges also offer a menu of paid special drinks, including top-shelf cocktails and Champagne.

When redeemed for premium drinks at Sky Club bars, your SkyMiles are worth 1.5 cents apiece, which means that this is actually a decent way to get good value out of your miles.

For instance, you could purchase a bottle of Brut Taittinger La Francaise for $114 or 7,600 miles (a redemption value of 1.5 cents per mile).

Book with Delta Vacations

Delta Vacations is a service offered by Delta that allows you to book all-in-one vacations packages including flights, hotels and curated activities. These packages are available to SkyMiles members only. However, you can book them either with SkyMiles or cash. It’s worth noting that you’ll earn SkyMiles when booking Delta Vacations with cash.

If you want to pay with miles, enter your SkyMiles account number while building your vacation package and then choose miles as your payment method. Also, if you don’t have enough miles to cover the entire cost of the package, Delta allows you to cover the rest with their Miles + Cash option.

If you have a Disney park on your shortlist of vacation destinations, you should know that Delta Vacations is one of the few solid ways to pay for Disney trips with points and miles. Few other travel rewards programs allow you to use points of miles to book Disney theme park tickets.

It’s worth noting that if you want to book a hotel or rental car with SkyMiles, the only way to do so is by booking a vacation package through Delta Vacations. There’s currently no way to redeem miles for only a hotel stay or only a car rental.

Ordering Magazines

Delta also allows you to use your SkyMiles to purchase magazine subscriptions through the MagsforMiles program. Exact rates will vary depending on which magazine you choose, and some of these subscription options offer surprisingly good value.

For instance, you can get 52 issues of Barron’s for 1,900 miles, which would come out to a little under 37 miles per issue. Since Delta SkyMiles are valued at 1.5 cents apiece, that cost would then be about 55 cents per issue, which is actually a solid deal.

Donating Miles to Charity

Delta gives you the option to donate your miles to dozens of charities worldwide that support a range of different causes through their SkyWish program. Each charity has its own minimum donation requirement, and you can select a maximum of five charities per transaction.

While donating your SkyMiles to charity through SkyWish is a generous way to use your miles, this redemption option offers low value. On top of that, charitable donations of miles through SkyWish aren’t tax deductible (unlike cash donations).

Transferring SkyMiles to a Friend

If you don’t have any use for your own miles, you might want to consider transferring them to a friend or family member. However, doing so provides a low value as Delta charges high fees for transferring points.

For starters, there’s a $30 processing fee per transaction. On top of that, transfers cost 1 cent per mile, which means you’ll wipe out most of the value by transferring them. For instance, if you were to transfer 30,000 SkyMiles, it would cost you $330, which is roughly what they’re worth.

If you do choose to transfer miles, you can transfer no more than 150,000 per year, and each SkyMiles account may receive a maximum of 300,000 miles per year.

Gift Cards

If you want to give your points to someone else to buy a flight, it makes more sense to spend your SkyMiles on a gift card than to transfer them from account to account. However buying gift cards still offers a relatively low-value redemption option.

Here are the different gift card options and the value per point the miles provide.

As you can see, redeeming your SkyMiles for gift cards always results in a value of less than 1 cent per mile, which is far lower than the value provided by other redemption options.

Delta gift cards never expire and can be used for any flight purchasable through Delta’s website or for Delta Vacations packages that include airfare. Gift cards usually take about seven days for delivery (even digital ones).

SkyMiles Experiences

Delta’s SkyMiles Experiences feature allows you to bid on exclusive tickets to events, such as sporting events, musical performances, culinary experiences and more, using your SkyMiles. Although the per-point value of these redemptions usually isn’t great, you may be able to score tickets to events that might otherwise be sold out.

SkyMiles Program Sweet Spots

While Delta’s move from a fixed award chart to a dynamic pricing model severely devalued the program as a whole, you can still find certain sweet spots that provide outstanding value.

Let’s look at some of the best ways to leverage the Delta SkyMiles program.

Flash Sales

Delta occasionally updates its SkyMiles Deals page with limited-time sales on certain flights. These flash sales are usually on short- and long-haul flights to U.S. destinations as well as some cities in Europe, Asia and the Caribbean.

Recently, there have been some great deals for the main cabin, Comfort+ and even first-class seats. It’s not uncommon to find international flights from the U.S. to the Caribbean in the main cabin for 14,000 SkyMiles or fewer.

However, it’s important that you routinely check SkyMiles Deals because they do change their flash sales often. You never know when the next sale on a flight from your hometown airport might pop up.

LATAM Economy Flights to South America

Regardless of what cabin class you search for, cheap flights from the U.S. to South America are hard to find. However, one of the most affordable ways to fly from the U.S. to South America is by booking LATAM award tickets with Delta SkyMiles.

For instance, you can book a round-trip ticket in economy from Miami (MIA) to São Paulo (GRU) for 76,000 SkyMiles plus $40 in fees. Since flights from the U.S. to Brazil are notoriously expensive, this is a solid deal.

The same flight would cost you $820. Thus, this redemption would yield a value of about 1.1 cents per mile, which is decent.

Flights from the U.S. to Canada

Delta is partnered with WestJet, one of the largest airlines serving Canada. Delta also markets flights to Canada on Endeavor Air and SkyWest Airlines. This means that SkyMiles members have many flight options when crossing the border from the U.S. to Canada, many of them well-priced.

For instance, you can fly a one-way flight from New York (JFK) to Toronto (YYZ) for as few as 7,500 SkyMiles plus fees and taxes or a round-trip flight for 15,000 SkyMiles plus taxes and fees.

If you were to book this same with cash, it would cost you $220. That means that this redemption would yield a value of about 1.5 cents per mile, which is good.

Domestic Flights

Certain short-haul flights within the United States can be purchased through Delta for as few as 9,000 SkyMiles round trip, which is a pretty good deal.

For example, you can fly round trip from New York City (JFK) to Boston (BOS) at this rate.

If you were to purchase the same flight with cash, it would cost you $98. So, this redemption would yield the value of about 1.1 cents per mile, which is a decent value. However, with Delta’s dynamic pricing model, it’s hard to find outsized value redemptions.

If you often travel from New York to Boston and you’re looking for a cheap and practical redemption, this is a pretty good one.

The Bottom Line

In 2015, Delta was the first major frequent-flyer program to switch to a dynamic pricing model for its award flights, significantly devaluing the program as a whole. In 2023, the carrier made some significant changes to its Medallion elite status program that are mostly bad news for Delta loyalists.

As you can see, the Delta SkyMiles program has been in major decline in recent years. However, despite all of this, there are still some things to like about this program.

For one, it’s fairly easy to rack up Delta SkyMiles by flying with Delta and its extensive network of airline partners, spending with co-branded Delta credit cards (some of which offer large sign-up bonuses), transferring Amex points and other interesting earning methods, such as riding with Lyft, ordering with Instacart or making vacation rental bookings with Airbnb.

When you redeem SkyMiles, you also get access to the full SkyTeam network, meaning that SkyMiles will take you nearly anywhere on the planet. Additionally, if you stay on top of Delta’s SkyMiles Deals, you can find some amazing redemptions that offer fantastic value. However, outside of these flash sales, Delta’s dynamic pricing model makes it difficult to get a lot of value out of your SkyMiles.