Thinking of using your hard-earned SkyMiles to book a Delta One trip somewhere fun? We have something you may wish to take into consideration before clicking that “Complete Purchase” button.
A Midwest friend of mine recently booked a Delta award trip. (Let’s call him “Bob,” as per usual.)
He’s a private guy and asked that I not reveal too much about him or his original destination.
So let’s call him Bob. He wanted to take Mrs. Bob to Buenos Aires (EZE — not to be confused with Eazy-E). And he decided they should go in style — SkyMiles balance permitting. But the Delta One SkyMiles redemption prices were ludicrously high.
You’re shocked, I know.
Let’s check out the cost from Kansas City (MCI). (BTW, most of these screenshots are re-creations but Bob walked me through the process and certified they’re the same.)
So that’s 670,000 roundtrip Delta SkyMiles for Mr. and Mrs. Bob to fly between Kansas City to Atlanta in domestic first class; and then between Atlanta to Buenos Aires in Delta One.
That was outside of their SkyMiles budget.
So they went with Premium Select, which is like domestic first class.
Not Delta One, but better than Main Cabin. Plus, the cost was only 118,000 SkyMiles each or 236,000 miles total roundtrip.
But when Bob went to select their seats, Delta presented him this upgrade offer:
For 74,900 SkyMiles each way or 149,800 roundtrip per person (he said the offer was the same on the way back), he can get upgraded to First Class and Delta One.
So let’s add all this up:
- 118,000 SkyMiles for Premium Select
- 25,900 SkyMiles for First Class, MCI to ATL
- 49,900 SkyMiles for Delta One, ATL to EZE
- 49,900 SkyMiles for Delta One, EZE to ATL
- 25,900 SkyMiles for First Class, ATL to EZE
That comes out to 269,600 SkyMiles roundtrip.
Remember that Delta was charging 335,000 SkyMiles roundtrip for the same itinerary.
So that’s a savings of 65,400 per person. And that’s if all upgrades are selected. Personally, I’m fine in Main Cabin for a couple of hours and saving almost 52,000 SkyMiles.
How Can You Check If You’ll Receive Cheap Delta One Upgrade Offers?
Simple. Book the trip at a cheaper price. Then see if you’re targeted for an upgrade.
Please keep in mind this is very much YSMV: Your SkyMileage May Vary. 🙂
You have 24 hours to cancel it and get a full refund. So have a plan in place. Like, “If I don’t get a good offer, I’m not going” or “I’ll live with it.” You have to decide soon.
Final Approach
You can save yourself some significant miles (and maybe money) by purchasing your Delta One ticket and then seeing if cheaper upgrade options are available. Remember, you have 24 hours to cancel.
Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
This is good advice, be aware that, unlike the miles for the actual trip, these miles for the upgrade may not be refundable, according to the terms and conditions. A nice Delta rep may do it anyway but the terms do state this as being the case.
@Barry – A wise warning but as a Diamond I have always (well, in the past anyway) got credit back for miles purchased upgrades.
Yes I did too last time (see later post about canceled trip to Israel).
That comment made my day! Thanks!
The price is still ridiculous. 250k+ for a round trip to South America… plenty of much cheaper options out them
@khatl – Clearly the pricing is bat crazy but Skymiles out of EZE is always crushingly insane – this tip at least saves you points if you choose to burn Skymiles.
Plus, more importantly, you can apply the IDEA to other bookings as well to see if savings can be found!
C’mon – hardly a worthwhile value, let alone report by you
@edw3rd – Chris post here but again, as mentioned, the idea of looking for upgrade option at purchase or right after booking works across all bookings and can save you points (a lot of them depending on booking). Not to mention if someone only has a TON of Skymiles vs other points this tip can save them points.
Agreed. We scored a round trip upgrade of around 140K for a roundtrip to Israel recently for my wife – from coach! Unfortunately we had to cancel the trip but this is another proof point that it can be done. I think this was a worthwhile article.
@Barry – Thank you for the support of the blog. Truly means a ton to both Chris and me (and my guess other readers as well)!
You’ll notice I wrote, “…the Delta One SkyMiles redemption prices were ludicrously high.” I agree with you that the price is pretty gross. But some people may want to take the trip. The miles are theirs to use.
I wrote the post encouraging people to use this practice of checking for upgrade offers so they can maybe save some miles to score an upgrade. That is worthwhile — and why I took the time to put together the post.
While it’s always nice to find savings, there should be shock at just the amount of miles needed, period. 269K miles for round trip per person is double what is normal with many other programs.
Sadly, most people will just bite the bullet instead of voting with their wallet. For the majority of the public who don’t fly for work, it’s better to just get a cash back card nowadays, or earn points via Ultimate Rewards / Membership Rewards / Capital One.
@Too Many – I have personally been laser focused on cash back and UR points since the start of the pandemic. I see no reason to change that for now. One day yes but not yet. Not everyone follows this plan.
One other consideration — the Delta upgrade pricing is also variable…on a recent flight from SEA to JFK, prices started at >60k miles and dropped to ~32k by day of departure. All to say, there might be an even better deal than booking premium select and upgrading right away (although I doubt 50k miles for DeltaOne will drop much…)
I use the vast majority of my skymiles on upgrades vs booking the award flight outright. I have taken this one step further plenty of times depending on if you have platinum medallion as well. I buy main cabin tickets all the time, wait for the ticket to be issued and take my comp upgrade to C+, then look for the skymiles upgrade offers to move to first/delta one. It usually reduces the upgrade miles by 1/3 if you have at least Platinum Medallion.
Excellent data point, thanks!
I have a total of 14 (6 to asia) delta one trips this year. All from the saving my global certs during the pandemic. 66k round trip to Bangkok and 62k to manila. Definitely wouldn’t use that amount of miles on a delta one.
Great tip – thanks Chris