Summary

• Identifying mile redemption ranges on Delta's platform can aid in planning, but effective use is challenging.
• One should check promotions for the best value and avoid transferring miles or combining them with cash.
• The TakeOff 15 benefit, only available for select Delta AmEx cards, provides a 15% redemption discount.

Since most airlines removed fixed redemption tables for flights booked with award miles, it has become increasingly difficult to identify exactly how many Delta SkyMiles one might need for a free flight. As a result, it has become increasingly difficult for one to plan whether or not they will have enough miles for a free vacation.

However, by carefully analyzing Delta's booking platform, one can identify a baseline range for certain kinds of flights, something that perspective flyers should be aware of. Furthermore, seasoned SkyMiles members may choose to use dozens of additional tricks to gain a leg-up in their search for a sweet deal on an award seat.

Across the board, Delta's mileage redemption platform works much like standard ticket purchases, with higher prices in the summer months and more wallet-damaging fares on the most popular routes. In this article, we will examine different Delta Air Lines routes and attempt to determine how many miles one should roughly expect to have to book certain kinds of flights.

Delta SkyMiles

Identifying how many Delta Air Lines miles you need for a given flight is fairly straightforward; however, attempting to get the best value for your miles can prove rather challenging. To look at a given route, one need only go to the Delta Air Lines website and look up the dates they are interested in, alongside the origin and destination of their desired flight.

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The output of a given search, however, can be slightly more challenging to understand. As opposed to simply displaying fares for a given day, the website will show you a price table that displays mile rates across a number of departure and arrival date combinations.

For one-way flights, the process is relatively similar but without a table and rather a list of redemption rates across dates. Below is an example table demonstrating the results from a search for award tickets from Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) to Ministro Pistarini International Airport (EZE) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for next January:

There are a few fascinating features to note about this chart, the first of which relates to how Delta will attempt to demonstrate on what dates one is likely to find the best deals. For example, although this search included departure and arrival dates of December 18th and January 2nd, the search results indicated that by moving up the departure by a few days, one can reduce the cost by over 30,000 miles.

Unlike some other airlines, this platform allows potential passengers to see both one-way and return fares at the same time. Furthermore, the platform also indicates the fees that are incurred for each ticket, a nice feature to show customers everything they are signing up for in one place.

Nonetheless, passengers should still check that they are getting a fair value for their miles. According to Nerd Wallet, each SkyMiles mile is worth roughly 1.2 cents, meaning that some bookings will be better made in cash, something the savvy consumer will do.

TakeOff 15

There are a few tricks that will allow loyal Delta Air Lines customers to ensure they are attaining the best value for their miles, many of which come alongside airline status or holding a Delta-American Express cobranded credit card. Specifically, the airline's TakeOff 15 benefit offers a 15% discount on the redemption of any miles being used to book a Delta Air Lines flight. Three cards offer this unique benefit:

• Delta Air Lines SkyMiles American Express Gold Card
• Delta Air Lines SkyMiles American Express Platinum Card
• Delta Air Lines SkyMiles American Express Reserve Card

The first of these cards, the SkyMiles American Express Gold Card, only offers a low annual fee of $150 and provides this unique benefit, and is one of the key reasons why the card proves so popular among loyal flyers and first-time cardholders alike. Notably, however, the airline's no-fee SkyMiles Blue card does not offer this benefit.

Promotions

If you are looking for unbeatable deals that could significantly stretch the value of your Delta SkyMiles, look no further than the award deals section of the Delta Air Lines website. Here, the carrier offers special promotional fares that can fall as low as 20,000 or 30,000 miles for some routes that can be quite popular.

Some deals can even offer long-haul routes for significantly below-average rates. For example, a quick search of the award deals platform will result in nonstop flights between New York's John F Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and Auckland Airport (AKL) in New Zealand for just 80,000 miles roundtrip.

However, there are some caveats passengers should be aware of when looking at award deals. These tickets are usually only bookable a few weeks in advance, and the date options are often unflexible. Depending on the route, other additional conditions may apply.

Things to avoid

When looking for award tickets, passengers must avoid a few things to get the best value out of their precious SkyMiles. For starters, transferring miles between accounts to accrue enough for a free ticket is incredibly expensive and will significantly diminish the value of award redemption.

Furthermore, Delta Air Lines also offers an option for passengers who do not have enough miles outright to purchase an award ticket: combining their miles with cash. However, this option will often involve passengers getting a significantly weaker redemption rate for their miles, one that pushes their value down significantly below the 1.2 cents per mile threshold.