Should you care about Delta SkyMiles award travel?

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If you stick a toe into the world of travel rewards, you’ll quickly learn that there is a lot to learn. There are scores of airline programs, half a dozen major bank programs, and bunch of hotel programs. Even if you’re writing about credit cards and loyalty programs full-time, it’s impossible to pay attention to them all. If you want to make travel rewards useful to you, you should suss out which programs are relevant and warrant your attention, and which you can ignore.

In this series of articles, we’re going to focus on helping you answer two questions for each airline program:

Is this airline program relevant to you? (Should you care about it?)
Should you collect points in this airline program directly?

As you evaluate programs and find the one that are relevant to you, you can use our spreadsheet to keep notes. That way, you can build your own reference. Let’s dig into Delta SkyMiles and see if you should pay attention to that program.

Is Delta SkyMiles relevant to you?

The first question you should answer is whether the Delta SkyMiles program is relevant to you. Does the program offer award travel at good rates to the places you want to go? If you live in a Delta hub and always fly on Delta, the answer to this is probably yes. If you live in a market with limited Delta schedule or where Delta flights are frequently more expensive than flights you would book with cash, maybe Delta isn’t relevant.

Perhaps it’s easiest to answer this question by considering the things that Delta SkyMiles is particularly good at.

If the kinds of travel that Delta SkyMiles is useful for matches up with your travel needs, it’s probably a relevant program for you.

Good uses of Delta SkyMiles

Here are the award travel redemptions where Delta SkyMiles shines.

U.S. domestic and international flights on Delta – SkyMiles have relatively predictable value and can be easily used to book travel on Delta. The value varies a bit. You tend to get better value for your SkyMiles when you don’t book to or from a Delta hub and when you book farther in advance. And when you hold a Delta credit card, you get a 15% discount on the miles prices of tickets through Delta’s TakeOff 15 discount.

Speculative bookings on SkyTeam – Through a certain lens, booking a trip with Delta SkyMiles is a better deal than booking with cash. For most airfares, Delta now lets you cancel your reservation and receive what you paid as a travel credit, good for one year after the date you originally booked your ticket. Delta charges no fees for award travel redeposits, so you can cancel any Delta SkyMiles award ticket (other than a basic economy ticket) for no penalty. The upside to canceling a SkyMiles ticket is that you get your cash co-pay refunded and your miles redeposited into your account. Since Delta SkyMiles don’t expire, you don’t have to worry about your travel credit expiring like you would, had you booked a ticket with cash.

Delta flash sales – Delta’s flash sales used to be a common, even monthly, event. Nowadays, these sales are rare, but when they do happen, they can provide opportunities for incredible value. Recently, I was able to score round-trip tickets to Australia on Delta from Minneapolis for 40,000 SkyMiles. Of course, hoarding Delta SkyMiles in the hope that you’ll get some sale in the future is highly speculative.

Short-haul flights on SkyTeam carriers that don’t touch the U.S. – Delta now ties all of its awards to or from North America to the revenue prices of its flights, but partner flights that don’t touch America are priced with a hidden award chart. If you’re hopping between countries on SkyTeam carriers, Delta can sometimes be a good option, particularly in Asia.

Should you collect Delta SkyMiles?

If an airline program provides awards to places you want to go, it might make sense to collect miles in that program. But it might want to simply learn how to use the program and accumulate points elsewhere.

If you can collect enough transferable points in programs that partner with Delta SkyMiles to meet your travel needs, it’s almost always better to do that. You can often earn points faster in transferable programs through credit card welcome bonuses and ongoing spending. And transferable point programs offer much more flexibility than collecting airline miles directly.

Here are the transfer partners of Delta SkyMiles.

Transfer partners

American Express Membership Rewards – You can transfer American Express Membership Rewards to Delta at a rate of 1 Membership Rewards point to 1 SkyMile. Amex charges a fee for the transfer, equivalent to about 60 cents per 1,000 points transferred.

Should you get SkyMiles credit cards?

If you’re decided that Delta Air Lines is relevant to you and you want to collect Delta SkyMiles directly, there are a handful of ways to increase your SkyMiles balance. You can fly the airline, you can engage with the airline’s shopping and hotel partners, you can order a whole lot of Starbucks, or you can get one of Delta’s seven co-branded credit cards.

The fastest way to earn a bunch of SkyMiles to use on your next vacation is by applying for new Delta SkyMiles credit cards with welcome bonuses. Here’s our top advice about Delta SkyMiles credit cards.

Wait for elevated welcome bonuses. If you want to earn Delta SkyMiles by applying for a new credit card, it’s usually best to look at the cards when Delta and American Express run limited-time elevated welcome offers. These increased welcome offers come around frequently. If the cards don’t offer elevated welcome offers, waiting around a few months can mean earning more miles when you do apply for the cards.

Choose the right card for you. The Delta credit cards come with different levels of benefits and different price points. If you’re only an occasional Delta flyer, you probably want the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card for a free checked bag and its relatively low annual fee. If you are certain that you’ll take a trip or two with a companion, look at the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card because you’ll get a companion ticket starting in your second year of card membership when you renew your card. If you fly Delta frequently and want lounge access, look at the premium Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card. And remember that you can pick up both the business and personal variants of each card.

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