Delta SkyMiles Platinum American Express Card Review and Guide

June 9, 2025: The Delta SkyMiles Platinum American Express Card is Delta’s mid-tier co-branded card offering an annual companion certificate, plus a bunch of relatively easily usable statement credits and other benefits.

In this guide to the Delta Platinum, we’ll cover our review of the card, give you an overview of the card’s rewards and benefits, and provide our recommendations for maximizing the card’s benefits and rewards.

Our review of the Delta SkyMiles Platinum American Express Card

Cards and Points Rating: 4.0/5.0
Read more about our star ratings.

The Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card is Delta’s mid-tier premium credit card, meant for people who fly Delta somewhat often, but who don’t need or want access to the Delta Sky Club.

The flagship benefit of the card is its annual companion certificate, which, despite its restrictions, is relatively easy to use. You’ll get the most value out of the companion certificate if you time your card application so that the certificate’s validity aligns with your travel patterns, since you must not only book, but also travel by the certificate’s expiration date.

The other benefit of the Delta Platinum card that you’re likely to get easy value from is the annual credit for bookings with Delta Stays. Assuming you’re staying in a hotel once or twice a year, simply making a prepaid booking through Delta Stays can get you up to a $150 statement credit. Add to that monthly credits for U.S. rideshare and Resy restaurants, and your statement credits alone could be more than the annual fee you’re paying.

Like other airline credit cards, the card doesn’t offer compelling rewards for most spending, but the rewards and benefits are just enough to make us feel good about booking Delta travel with the card.

If you’re a Delta traveler and are willing to jump through just a few hoops to get the value, you’re likely to get plenty of value out of the Delta SkyMiles credit card to justify paying the card’s $350 annual fee.

Delta SkyMiles Platinum American Express Card at a glance

Annual fee: $350
Foreign transaction fee: foreign_transaction_fee
(See Rates and Fees)

The Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card is a great choice if you can make use of the card’s annual companion certificate or if the $2,500 Medallion® Qualification Dollar MQD Headstart can get you to to the next level of Medallion status.

Welcome offer

Best welcome offer: Earn 90,000 Bonus Miles after spending $4,000 in purchases on the new Card in the first 6 months of Card Membership. Offer ends July 16, 2025.
Apply through our referral link to support this site. (Click on Personal Cards or Business Cards to see all Delta credit cards.)

This bonus is earned as Delta SkyMiles®.

When the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card isn’t offering a limited-time increased welcome offer, you might be able to get more SkyMiles by looking into one of the targeted offers available on the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card.

Rewards

• 3x on Delta purchases made directly with Delta.
• 3x on purchases made directly with hotels.
• 2x on dining at restaurants worldwide, including takeout and delivery in the U.S.
• 2x on groceries at U.S. supermarkets.
• 1x on other purchases.

Rewards are earned as Delta SkyMiles®.

Benefits

Delta travel benefits

• Annual Main Cabin companion certificate.
  Earned each year after renewal of your card.
• Delta Stays credit.
  Up to $150 each year.
• TakeOff 15.
  15% discount on Delta award travel.
• MQD Headstart.
  Receive $2,500 Medallion® Qualification Dollars each Medallion Qualification Year.
• MQD Boost.
  Earn $1 Medallion® Qualification Dollar for each $20 in purchases on your card.
• First checked bag free.
• 20% back on in-flight purchases.
• Complimentary upgrades.
  Be added to the upgrade list after SkyMiles Medallion members and Reserve card members.
• Pay with Miles.

Consumer insurance benefits

• Extended Warranty.
• Purchase Protection.
• Cell Phone Protection.

Travel insurance benefits

• Trip Delay Insurance.
• Car Rental Loss and Damage Insurance.
• Baggage Insurance Plan.
• Global Assist® hotline.

Partner benefits and statement credits

• $120 Rideshare credit.
  Up to $10 in statement credits each month. Enrollment required.
• $120 Resy credit.
  Up to $10 per month in statement credits each month. Enrollment required.
• Fee credit for Global Entry or TSA PreCheck®.
  Receive either a $120 Global Entry statement credit once every 4 years or up to an $85 credit for TSA PreCheck® once every 4.5 years.
• Hertz Five Star® Status. Enrollment required.
• Amex Offers. Enrollment required.

Welcome offer: Earn SkyMiles with a new card

Annual fee: $350

Best welcome offer: Earn 90,000 Bonus Miles after spending $4,000 in purchases on the new Card in the first 6 months of Card Membership. Offer ends July 16, 2025.
Apply through our referral link to support this site. (Click on Personal Cards or Business Cards to see all Delta credit cards.)

This bonus is earned as Delta SkyMiles®.

When the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card isn’t offering a limited-time increased welcome offer, you might be able to get more SkyMiles by looking into one of the targeted offers available on the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card.

How to maximize the card

Here are our expert tips on how to maximize the value you get from the Delta Platinum card.

Getting the card: Application strategy

Maximizing the value you get from the Delta Platinum card starts before you even get the card. Here’s what to consider.

• Amex welcome offer rules. American Express restricts the number of times you can earn a welcome bonus on many of its cards to once per lifetime. With the Delta personal cards, you’re ineligible to earn a bonus if you’ve had the same or a higher-tier of the same card before.
• Consider applying for the Delta Gold card first if you haven’t ever had a personal Delta credit card before. Once you apply for the Delta Platinum card, you’ll be ineligible to earn a bonus on the Delta personal Gold card.
• Think about the timing of the companion certificate. You’ll begin to receive your annual companion certificates starting on your first cardmember anniversary. These will expire one year after they’re issued, so be sure that they’re issued (and expire) on a timeline that makes sense.
• Look at getting the small business variant of the Delta Platinum card instead of the personal version. The annual fee and the benefits are substantively similar. Except that you’ll receive $50 more in Delta Stays credits with the business card. Plus, you can earl a welcome bonus on the business card, even if you’ve had the card before.

When you get your card: Things to do when you receive your Delta SkyMiles Platinum card

Shortly after you receive your card, you’ll want to do a few things to ensure that you are ready to take full advantage of your card. Here’s what you should do:

• Enroll in your benefits. Several of the card’s benefits require a one-time enrollment on the Amex website or in the Amex mobile app. Enrolling in all of these benefits when you receive your card means you won’t forget to do it later. Here are the benefits that require enrollment:
  • $120 rideshare credit.
  • $120 Resy credit.
  • Hertz Five Star® Status.
• Add the card to your rideshare apps. You’ll want to have the card available to select as a payment method when you call your rideshare.
• Make a plan to earn your welcome or conversion bonus. If you were offered a Delta credit card welcome bonus, you’ll want to make a plan to spend enough on the card to earn your welcome bonus.
• Set up automatic payments. This is a good practice with any credit card—setting up automatic payments to pay your statement balance in-full every month is a good way to ensure that you never miss a payment and never pay interest.

Spending: When to use the card

Like most other airline credit cards, the Delta SkyMiles credit card earns sub-par rewards for most purchases. Here’s when you should use the card for spending.

Expert tips: Getting maximum value from your benefits

Here are some tips on getting the most from your Delta Platinum card’s benefits.

Rideshare credit

If you only occasionally use a rideshare service, it’s probably easiest to simply set the card as your default card in Uber or Lyft to get the $10 monthly rideshare credit in any month when you take a rideshare.

But the Delta Platinum card doesn’t earn great rewards on rideshare purchases. With most apps, you can select a payment method when requesting your ride, so it might make more sense to use your card that offers the best rewards on rideshare and then change the payment method to your Delta card for one trip.

Finally, with Uber, remember that you can change your payment method for 30 days after you take your trip. If you take an Uber near the end of the month, waiting until the following month to change your payment to your Delta Platinum card should trigger the credit for the following month.

Resy credit

Even if you don’t go out to a Resy restaurant every month, you can still get plenty of value from the card’s Resy credit.

The first step in using your Resy credit is finding a restaurant nearby that you like. Remember, you’ll only get the credit when you use your card at a restaurant listed on Resy. You can find Resy restaurants on either the Resy mobile app or the Resy website.

Many restaurants sell gift cards and, in my experience, gift cards purchased directly from Resy restaurants will trigger this $10 credit. If you don’t dine out (at a Resy) restaurant every month, picking up a gift card when you’re nearby can be an easy way to capture the value of this credit.

Finally, if you have multiple Delta credit cards with Resy credits, remember that you can usually ask to split the bill and pay with two different credit cards.

Companion certificate

The Delta main cabin round-trip companion certificate that you get with the Delta Platinum card is the benefit with the most potential value. But how much value you can get from the certificate depends heavily on your travel patterns.

The biggest thing to remember with the Delta companion certificate are that you must both book and travel by your certificate’s expiration date, which is one year after it is issued. The longer you wait to use your companion certificate, the fewer opportunities you may have to use it. And since the companion certificate is only valid for certain discounted advance-purchase fares, you might not be able to use it at all if you wait until a few weeks before it expires.

You’ll likely do best with your companion certificate by using it for peak travel, booked well in advance. You can easily get $750 or more of value if you’re flying to Hawaii during the fall from a non-competitive hub like Minneapolis. But as long as you travel on Delta a few times a year, you’re likely to get a few hundred dollars of value out of the certificate without much hassle.

If you don’t yet have the Delta Platinum card, you might want to time your application based on how you use your certificate, since the certificate’s expiration date. Remember, the certificate gets issued after your cardmember anniversary date—and, depending on when that falls, it might make the certificate more or less useful to you.

For example, if you plan to use your certificate for peak summer travel, it might make sense to apply for the Delta Platinum card in the fall, so the certificate will become available when you’re likely to be booking your trip.

Finally, since the second passenger on a companion certificate won’t earn miles or credit toward status for their ticket, make sure that the primary passenger is the one you want earning status.

Delta Stays credit

Generally, you’ll want to book just enough hotel stays through the Delta Stays portal to use your Delta Stays credit, and then forget about the portal for the rest of the year.

Earning only 2 Delta SkyMiles per dollar isn’t great when you could be earning rewards worth 5 times what those SkyMiles are worth in a hotel program when you book directly. Most hotel chains don’t award hotel points or grant you any benefits you have from their loyalty programs if you book through a third-party portal like Delta Stays.

This means that it’s best to book your one-off stays at off-brand hotels. Like when you need to spend a night in an airport hotel or when you’re staying in a city with no good options from Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, or the other large hotel brands.

But if you’re chasing status, watching out for promotions can give you an easy to boost your status.

Since launching the Delta Stays portal, Delta has periodically run promotions where you can get Medallion Qualification Dollars for bookings through Delta Stays. If you’re chasing Medallion status, booking during one of these promotions can get you a little more value.

Rewards: Maximizing the value of redemptions

Delta SkyMiles aren’t known for their ability to get you outsized value for redemptions, but you can get consistent value, especuially close to home. Here are some great uses of the SkyMiles you’ll earn with this card.

• Domestic travel on Delta. If most of your travel is domestic on Delta,. Delta SkyMiles won’t give you great value, but what you will get is consistent value. This means you won’t need to hunt around for award space—you can just book the flights you want. See our coverage on the value of Delta SkyMiles for more on what you might expect.
• Flights to Canada involving WestJet. Itineraries involving WestJet. WestJet itinieraries seem to price using a fixed 25,000 mile price between the U.S. lower 48, based on award availability. These WestJet itineraries book into the equivalent of a WestJet “Econo” fare and can be a good value relative to the cash prices of tickets.
• Flights you might need to change. When you cancel a non-Basic Economy ticket originating in the United States, you’ll get your SkyMiles redeposited to your account with no redeposit fee. This makes SkyMiles great for speculative bookings. Have a trip coming up? Book with SkyMiles now, and if the price drops, cancel and rebook your trip.
• SkyMiles flash sales. D

Medallion status: Earning MQDs with the card

The Delta Platinum can help you get Delta Medallion Status in two ways: Through the 2,500 MQD Headstart you get with the card and through the MQD Boost benefit, which awards 1 Medallion Qualification Dollar for every $20 you spend on the card.

But using the Delta Platinum card for spending in order to get a higher level of Medallion status is a bad deal.

If you need an additional 2,500 Medallion Qualification dollars to get to the next level of status, you’d need to spend a total of $50,000 on your Delta Platinum card to earn that additional 2,500 MQDs. Assuming that you value Delta SkyMiles at about 1 cent each, compared to a 2% cash back card, you’re giving up $500 of reward value.

You’d be much better off picking up an additional Platinum card—and paying its $350 fee to get those 2,500 MQDs. Because then you’d also get another companion certificate, additional Resy and Rideshare credits, and a welcome bonus in your first year.

Should you upgrade or downgrade?

Delta offers four tiers of it SkyMiles credit card: Blue, Gold, Platinum, and Reserve. Maybe the Delta Platinum card isn’t exactly the right card for you. Here’s how to know if you should upgrade or downgrade.

Downgrading to the Delta Gold card

If you’re not getting enough value out of the annual companion certificate, Resy credits, and rideshare credits to justify a card with a $350 annual fee, you could consider downgrading to the Delta Gold card. This can be a good option if you don’t have Medallion status and want to keep the free checked bags. You’ll also be able to squeeze $100 out of the card’s Delta Stays credit

You won’t be eligible for a welcome bonus since you already hold the Delta Platinum card, but if you do apply for a Delta Gold card as a new cardmember, you’ll be eligible to get the first year’s annual fee waived.

Upgrading to the Delta Reserve card

If you fly Delta at least somewhat frequently, you might consider upgrading to the Delta Reserve card. For an additional $300 a year, you’ll get 15 visits per year to the Delta Sky Club, as well as four one-time guest passes that you can use to get someone you’re traveling with. You’ll get twice as many rideshare credits and another $50 in Delta Stays credits. And the companion certificate you’ll receive with the Reserve card will also let you book Delta Comfort+ and First Class tickets.

However, if you have never had a personal Delta Reserve card before and you are eligible to earn a welcome bonus, it might be a better idea to apply for a new card so that you can earn a welcome bonus.

Even if you’ve had the Reserve card before, you may occasionally see upgrade offers from Amex and Delta trying to tempt you into upgrading with a number of bonus miles after you meet a minimum spending requirement, similar to a welcome bonus. This can be a good option if you’ve had a personal SkyMiles Reserve card before.

Reminders: Actions you need to take to maximize the card

If you want all of the above distilled down into an actionable checklist, here you go. Here are the things you need to do.

Bottom line: Easy value for Delta travelers

When the Delta SkyMiles Platinum card first came out, I was not a fan of the annual fee going up, coupled with a handful of statement credits—I wanted a simpler card. But I’ve come around to the idea of booking with Delta Stays and using the card for rideshare and Resy restaurants. If you fly with Delta a handful of times a year, it should be easy to get plenty of value from this card.