Lazy Guide: Delta SkyMiles
Tl;dr: Delta uses dynamic pricing, meaning the flight you want could be expensive. But frequent award sales—especially in basic economy—can offer some of the cheapest international flights available with points, particularly for co-branded cardholders.
Welcome to the Lazy Guide to Delta SkyMiles. This is not a comprehensive guide or a list of ways to get “maximum” value. Instead of “sweet spots,” we’re highlighting lazy spots—ways to use points to travel abroad with minimum cost and effort. These are just to get you started—redemption options are always changing and can vary based on your home airport, so we recommend verifying what works for your specific situation before pursuing any points strategy.
The Amex Gold was my first travel card and my introduction to points; when I started, I had only traveled abroad once, and only ever redeemed points for gift cards. Delta SkyMiles changed that by offering an accessible and affordable way to cross an ocean.
Who is Delta SkyMiles best for?
SkyMiles are great for:
Those who prioritize bargains over predictability or luxury
Those who are willing to navigate Amex’s coupon-heavy model
Those who spend a lot on food (and have an Amex Gold)
If you highly value simplicity, predictability, or luxury, you might want to consider other options.
How to redeem SkyMiles – lazily
Unfortunately, SkyMiles are difficult to plan around. Unlike some other programs, you usually can’t reliably plan on getting between any two particular airports for a set number of points. That means you might pay a steep price if you have specific travel plans and want to use Delta points. Also, Delta famously has extremely high award pricing for business-class seats, often costing hundreds of thousands of points.
The good news is that Delta regularly offers deeply-discounted awards. The pricing can be remarkably low in basic economy, but main cabin pricing is still affordable. I have historically seen at least a few deals to Asia under ~60,000 SkyMiles round-trip and under ~40,000 to Europe each year. In the month prior to publishing this post, I saw a deal to Taiwan for 35k SkyMiles Roundtrip and one to Europe for 28k SkyMiles—less with the right Delta card. These might not be peak season flights, but for rock-bottom pricing and minimal fees, it’s hard to beat Delta.
The trick is knowing when these deals come around.
Easiest: get deal alerts
Although this costs money, which can eat into the value proposition, deal alert services can flag the best deals for you and help you snag them before they sell out or disappear from the market. I use Thrifty Traveler for this; I actually signed up after seeing an ad touting their ability to find Delta deals, and they haven’t disappointed. Going also offers points deals, although I think their Delta coverage is weaker based on my experience subscribing to both for several years.
If you value your time more than squeezing out every last cent, this is often the laziest way to use Delta miles.
Easy: Check the sales
If you want to save your money, Delta has an award sale page on its website. These deals usually won’t match what you can get during their big flash sales (unless you happen to check at just the right time), but the deals are solid. This can be a free, low-effort path to a pretty good deal.
Free: Newsletters
You can also subscribe to general newsletters like those from The Points Guy or Delta’s marketing emails to SkyMiles members. You’ll get a lot of emails that aren’t deals, but you still might get see some great opportunities. Many major nationwide sales get flagged by TPG, while Delta will occasionally drop a great deal right in your inbox.
The hard way: brute force searches
You can always just start plugging destinations into the Delta search function and see if you can find a deal. In my experience, it doesn’t take long to learn which destinations tend to have solid deals on Delta, and Delta has a flexible-date search, allowing you to search expansively. This isn’t fun, but I have always been able to find a solid deal to some international destination with 20-30 minutes of effort.
For the purposes of this article, I picked a random 7-day period in October and searched flights to Paris, which were over 100,000 points round-trip (not ideal). My next search was Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (I’ve historically had good luck searching Delta flights to Vietnam), and a round-trip was 54,000 miles and $46 in fees (operated by Vietnam Airlines, so no cardholder discount). That was an $840 flight—not bad for 5 minutes of effort. (I then struck out on Amsterdam and Lisbon, before finding a 34k-mile flight to Barcelona. Not bad for 10 minutes.)
How to earn SkyMiles
There are a number of cards that earn SkyMiles directly, or Amex Membership Rewards points that can be converted to SkyMiles.
Amex’s SkyMiles cards include the Delta Blue, Gold, Platinum, and Reserve, while Amex’s Membership Reward-earning cards include the Green, Gold, and Platinum.
Although you could earn a welcome offer on each of these cards, note that Amex has special application rules that can affect your eligibility for a welcome bonus depending on the order in which you apply for each card. Also note: Amex passes on taxes when transferring Membership Rewards to Delta SkyMiles, which can affect the value of those points.
Collectively, these cards offer bonuses on a few spending categories:
5x on flights (Platinum)
4x on dining/groceries (Gold)
3x travel (Green) flights (Gold)
3x hotels (Delta Platinum)
2x dining and groceries (Delta Gold)
Some limitations apply; check the terms and conditions.
In practice, the only true everyday power earner here is the Amex Gold—and that’s only if you spend heavily on food. Justifying its annual fee usually means consistently using several small monthly credits (Dunkin, Uber, and/or certain dining), which adds a layer of ongoing management. The Delta Gold card can be a decent simple option, but isn’t a powerful earner.
Beyond credit cards and flying, some easy ways to earn SkyMiles include Uber trips, Starbucks purchases, Rakuten Rewards, and Airbnb stays.
How to get status on Delta, Lazily
Delta status is based on a single metric, Medallion Qualification Dollars, which entry-level Silver status unlocked after earning 5,000 MQDs. Unlike some other programs, award flights do count toward status, with 10,000 SkyMiles redeemed earning 100 MQDs.
Delta’s premium Platinum and Reserve co-branded cards (personal and business) each offer 2,500 MQDs per year, so holding two would instantly unlock status.
Bilt Platinum status (unlocked by earning 200,000 points or spending $50,000) can be used to unlock Flying Blue Gold status, which in turn has some elite benefits on Delta.
Common pitfalls and alternatives
Not using the coupons. Many Amex and Delta cards often have a lot of small statement credits or other benefits that need to be tracked and redeemed to break even on the annual fee. Alaska’s Atmos Rewards (with Bilt) and American Airlines AAdvantage (with Citi) offer card lineups with fewer credits to keep track of.
Not having a SkyMiles credit card. Delta’s 15% discount on award flights on its own aircraft can make a big difference in award value, potentially enough to justify the annual fee by itself depend on the amount of miles redeemed.
Lacking flexibility. The best deals with Delta are on basic economy tickets (which can’t be cancelled or changed) and on sales. When your plans are fixed, it can be better to have more flexible rewards such as Bilt points (which can be redeemed for 1.25¢ each in the Bilt Travel portal) or Chase or Capital One points (which allow you to book any travel through any source and cover the purchase with points at 1¢ per point).
Booking business class via Delta. Although Delta occasionally offers flash sales on business class seats as well, those deals are rarer, and still usually run ~100k SkyMiles each way. Delta’s own business class seats are often cheaper when booked via Flying Blue or Virgin, while other programs like American, Alaska, Japan Airlines, ANA, Aeroplan, and others can have better and cheaper business class availability.
Lazy Take 🦥
If you want rock-bottom pricing and are willing to keep track of Amex’s coupons, Delta SkyMiles is great.
If you care more about reliable pricing and simple earning, look at Atmos/Bilt or AAdvantage/Citi instead.