All about Delta TakeOff 15: 15% mileage discount on Delta award tickets

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If you hold a business or personal variant of the Delta SkyMiles Gold, Platinum, or Reserve credit cards, you save 15% when booking award travel using miles on Delta Flights through Delta’s Take15Off discount. This discount is a great benefit that makes your SkyMiles measurable more valuable just for holding one of Delta’s credit cards. (Terms and conditions apply.)

The best part? This benefit is super simple to use.

Here’s how to use the Delta TakeOff 15 discount.

How to use the Delta TakeOff 15 discount

If you are the primary cardholder of a Delta SkyMiles credit card, using the Delta TakeOff 15 discount is as simple as booking an award ticket using your miles at Delta.com.

Once you have logged in to your SkyMiles account, the SkyMiles prices of flights will reflect your discount at every step of the booking process. You don’t need to do anything extra to apply your discount.

How to book a Delta award ticket using SkyMiles

Booking an award ticket using SkyMiles is simple. Most itineraries with Delta SkyMiles can be booked online. Your first step is to search for your travel at Delta.com.

Enter your origin and destination airports, select one-way or round-trip, and select your travel dates. You will want to tick the box by “Shop with Miles” to see travel priced in SkyMiles.

If you have some flexility, you can select “My dates are flexible.” For our example search, we’ll do this to show the complete booking process.

By default you’ll be searching for all airfares, including Basic Economy. Delta Basic Economy airfares come with a bunch of restrictions:

No seat selection ahead of time
No changes allowed. (Cancelation is allowed for a $99-$199 cancellation charge.)
No medallion upgrade beneifts
No MQD accrual.

Unless you intend to book basic economy, you might want to click on “Advanced Search” and select “Main Cabin” under “Best Fares For.”

If you searched for a round trip and selected “My dates are flexible” your screen display a matrix showing you the lowest prices available for departures up to three days before your selected departure date and three days after your selected return date. If you qualify for the TakeOff 15 discount, the prices shown on this screen will reflect that discount.

Let’s say that we have some flexibility to return on Tuesday, April 9th, but we can depart no earlier than Thursday. We can select this option for 22,900 SkyMiles, plus $12. Click “Continue” once you’ve selected the dates you want.

If you have even more flexibility, you can click on “Price Calendar” at the top of the page. This will bring up a calendar showing you trips of your selected trip length. You can change trip length to update prices on the calendar or page through the calendar to see pricing for the entire year.

Once you’ve selected your dates from the calendar, or if you didn’t search with flexible dates, you’ll now select your outbound flight. Here’s the screen that shows you flight options. The default view generally shows you the lowest-priced non-stop option on top, but Delta offers a lot of options for filtering and sorting your search under “Sort & Filter.”

The evening flight at 8:15 works fine for us, so we’ll select that flight, starting at 22,900 SkyMiles.

If you want to see prices in terms of dollars, you can click on “$ USD” under “Show Price In:” at the top of the screen. I like to do this to check on the value I’m getting out of my SkyMiles. In this case, we’re getting almost 1.7 cents per mile. Not too shabby for SkyMiles.

Once we’ve selected our departure flight, we can select our return flight. 7:45am seems a bit early, but the 2:30pm option is good and it is offered at the same price as other options on that day. Let’s select that flight.

Finally, we’ll see the checkout screen. On this screen, we’ll enter passenger information and payment information, request upgrades and select whether we want additional trip insurance. Once we’ve entered all of our information and we’re ready to purchase our flight, we’ll click “Complete Purchase” at the bottom of the page. (Scroll down on the page to see the button.)

And, just like that, our trip is booked!

Delta award ticket tips and tricks

Change/cancel policy: Other than Basic Economy tickets, Delta awards tickets originating in the United States and Canada can be changed or canceled for free. If you cancel your eligible ticket prior to departure, you’ll get your miles back and receive the amount you paid for taxes and fees back to your credit card.

Price drops: If the price of your flight drops after you book it, you can re-book your flight and receive a refund of any applicable fare difference in miles.

Elite upgrades: Other than basic economy, Delta award tickets are eligible for elite upgrades.

MQDs: Award travel on Delta accrues Medallion Qualifying Dollars (MQDs.) based on the number of miles redeemed for your ticket. You’ll get 1 MQD for every 100 SkyMiles redeemed.

More about the Delta Air Lines credit cards

You can learn more about the Delta Air Lines credit cards by visiting our overview of Delta credit cards. There, you’ll find complete details and comparisons of all of the Delta credit cards.

Current Delta Air Lines credit card welcome bonuses

Delta Air Lines and Amex offer welcome bonuses for new cardmembers who get a new Delta credit card and meet spending requirements. Here are the details on the best Delta Air Lines credit card new customer bonuses.

Delta SkyMiles® Blue American Express Card card art — The best Delta Air Lines credit card welcome bonuses.

Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card card art — The best Delta Air Lines credit card welcome bonuses.

Delta Credit Card	Welcome Bonus	Full Welcome Bonus
Delta SkyMiles® Blue American Express Card Annual fee: $0	bonus_miles	bonus_miles_full (See Rates and Fees)
Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card Annual fee: $0 introductory annual fee for the first year, then $150.	bonus_miles	bonus_miles_full (See Rates and Fees)
Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card Annual fee: $350	bonus_miles	bonus_miles_full (See Rates and Fees)
Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card Annual fee: $650	bonus_miles	bonus_miles_full (See Rates and Fees)
Delta SkyMiles® Gold Business American Express Card Annual fee: $0 introductory annual fee for the first year, then $150.	bonus_miles	bonus_miles_full (See Rates and Fees)
Delta SkyMiles® Platinum Business American Express Card Annual fee: $350	bonus_miles	bonus_miles_full (See Rates and Fees)
Delta SkyMiles® Reserve Business American Express Card Annual fee: $650	bonus_miles	bonus_miles_full (See Rates and Fees)

More details about the Delta Air Lines credit card welcome bonuses