Delta SkyMiles Miles: Redeem your Miles for flights and upgrades

When redeeming miles, SkyMiles doesn’t differ too much from other programs: You can choose between free flights and upgrades, or other travel services such as hotels and car rentals. All of this can be booked through the website, which is not obvious and therefore very practical.

With SkyMiles, you can book award flights with Delta, all Skyteam airlines and other partner airlines. However, there is no longer a premium table and the rate is dynamically calculated based on demand and date. In particular, the fact that this also applies to all partner airlines makes short-term travel bookings rather unattractive. Also, it is very difficult for us to get an overview of the possible points of interest, as it would theoretically have to start only one search for each route in order to find the minimum prices for them.

That’s why it limited us to four sample routes to determine the price differences of flights from France to different parts of the states, and it also looked for a domestic flight for comparison. Travel class is always business class or first domestic class.

As you can see, the mileage values ​​for a round-trip flight aren’t exactly appealing, especially since taxes and fees aren’t exactly low. Also striking is that there is no difference in price for an additional change, sometimes award flights are even cheaper. It normally only see this phenomenon with paid flights, but of course this makes sense, as the price of award flights is based on the regular ticket price. It’s important to note that these are only the minimum values ​​and it can be almost twice as expensive to book the same route on a different date, depending on the date.

Even longer domestic flights are not very attractive, only taxes and fees are low. The same economy class flight with 21,000 miles is a much better choice for outbound and return flights, especially since the level of taxes and charges does not change.

Upgrade prices are also tied to the booking situation, so it was unable to find any specific value for some lines. As usual, conditions are restrictive when it comes to booking classes, so you can only upgrade from higher priced classes. You can also switch to partner airlines (Air France, KLM, Virgin Atlantic), which is not common.

If you want to fly with partner airlines, you should be prepared to pay a higher price than for flights with Delta, so swapping here is in most cases completely impractical. However, it has not been able to verify this in all cases, so it advises you to always search for the desired connection when searching for a flight.

There are some quite acceptable deals for 88,000 miles and around 50 dollars in taxes and fees, but they are a little hard to find and are not the best deals for a route particular, so in most cases it is not useful to transfer Membership Rewards points specifically for this purpose.

Flights to Australia are generally very rewarding, however, as it has found. The minimum value for a return flight is 180,000 miles, or 90,000 miles one way. You have the choice between Vietnam Airlines and China Airlines with a change at the respective hub. For China Airlines Business Class, there’s even a detailed review from us.

Redeem your miles for other benefits

You have the option of using your miles for other ground services, such as access to the Delta Sky Club. This gives you access to a lounge operated by Delta on all Delta and partner flights. A one-year membership is available for 54,500 miles, with an additional 2,500 miles for guests each time.

Alternatively, you can also use your miles to book travel through Delta Vacations or purchase an item from the online store. However, these types of redemptions are usually associated with low value, so it do not recommend such a redemption.