Frequent Miler on the Air - Wringing value from Delta SkyMiles | Ep213 | 7-29-23

Episode Date: July 29, 2023

If you're flush with Delta SkyMiles, don't flush them on poor redemptions -- instead, listen to this week's show and learn how you can squeeze good value out of your SkyMiles. One quick update: During our Award Talk segment, we discussed the ability to book Starlux via Alaska Airlines, but that availability and pricing got pulled between the time we recorded and the time we published -- we were right that you had to jump on it quickly, but it died even faster than we expected. 00:00 Intro 00:56 Award Talk 01:07 Bilt: 75% to 150% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club https://frequentmiler.com/bilt-august-rent-day-up-to-150-transfer-bonus-to-virgin-atlantic/ 07:31 Now book ITA via Virgin Atlantic https://frequentmiler.com/ita-airways-bookable-with-virgin-atlantic-miles/ 10:17 Alaska makes Starlux bookable*** Note that we discuss pricing for this award that Alaska has already pulled. See our post for more: https://frequentmiler.com/alaska-airlines-fumbles-launch-of-starlux-awards/ 12:59 Amex adds Qatar as a transfer partner https://frequentmiler.com/amex-transfer-partners/ 15:44 Aeroplan now allows awards to be changed online https://frequentmiler.com/aeroplan-awards-can-now-be-changed-online/ 17:27 Choice and Radisson finally merge https://frequentmiler.com/radisson-to-choice-conversion-low-end-slight-deval-high-end-better-value/ 21:47 Card Talk: Delta Gold SkyMiles and Delta Gold SkyMiles Business cards https://frequentmiler.com/dlgold/ https://frequentmiler.com/dlgoldbiz/ 28:34 Main Event: Wringing value from Delta SkyMiles 29:46 15% discount on Delta awards on Delta metal with several credit cards 30:17 Compare against the round trip prices 31:05 Unannounced sales https://frequentmiler.com/delta-award-sale-40k-miles-in-economy-to-australia-and-more/ 33:50 Westjet to Canada 36:18 Book awards that don't start or end in the US or Canada https://frequentmiler.com/delta-skymiles-business-class-deals/ 41:35 Finding partner award space on Delta.com https://frequentmiler.com/a-great-new-way-to-find-delta-partner-award-availability/ 46:29 Question of the Week: What's the best strategy to get rebooked when your partner award gets cancelled? Music credit: Annie Yoder

Let's get into the giant mailbag. What crazy thing did City do this week? It's time for Mattress Running the Numbers. Ready for the main event? The main event. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, ringing value from Delta SkyMiles. Are we sure that's possible to do?

We're sure that it's... You must be talking about poor value. I'm not. I'm talking about getting real value from Delta SkyMiles. And yes, it is possible. Is it easy? Maybe. It depends on how you go about it.

So we will get into that for the main event. Normally, I say first, it's time for Giant Mailbag. But today, we're actually skipping the mailbag. We're skipping what crazy thing? We're skipping mattress running the numbers. Why? Because we've got like a dozen award talk segments to go through and we need to save some time for all that. We sure do, because this week we've got something really big. And I say that because if you've been collecting built rewards points, built my goodness on the first of the month for rent day has coming up here a big, big transfer bonus. So a 75% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club, that's at a base level.

If you have elite status with Built Rewards, so you've been using your card and paying your rent and all the rest of that, then you could qualify for up to a 150% transfer bonus to Virgin Atlantic. I mean, that's just wild. So that's like if you transfer 100,000 points and you have that top tier elite status with built, you get 250,000 Virgin Atlantic miles. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, isn't that crazy? And I look at something like this and the common complaint about the built card, of course, has been that it doesn't come with a welcome bonus. And that is really a tough thing to wrap one's mind around in this space where tons of cards have huge welcome bonuses. But I have friends in New York paying rent who, over the course of two years, I'm sure, have earned more than 100,000 built points. And so now you're looking at doubling in half that, right? I mean, like two

and a half, like you said, that 100,000 to 250,000, that's an extra 150,000 transferable points. I mean, even if you look at the next best transfer bonus we've ever seen to Virgin Atlantic, what is it? 30? Maybe, maybe we saw 40%. I don't even sure if we saw that. I think 30 is probably the best we've ever seen. That's my guess. Yeah. But most, most you ever would have been looking at a transfer bonus on 100 was one hundred and thirty thousand total points. And this is two hundred and fifty thousand extra one hundred and twenty thousand on top of the most generous transfer. Right. Right. See, in that case, you know, that's that's nuts. So is this like so in May, I think it was they did a one day hundred percent transfer bonus to Air France, which was an unprecedented great value at that time.

Is this also a one-day thing just like that? Yes. Okay, so August 1st, you have to be ready. You have to already have your built points and know that you want to transfer to Virgin Atlantic. It's not a no-brainer necessarily to transfer all your points to Virgin Atlantic because Virgin Atlantic has certain sweet spots that are really great. But there's also a lot of the world you might want to get to where Virgin Atlantic is not going to be very helpful. So you really need to know about the program. Another way of saying this is Air France was way more flexible, can get you a lot of good

deals to a lot of different places. Virgin Atlantic is more specific. So you do need to check out our post on the best uses for Virgin Atlantic miles and see whether it's right for you. But it is hard to ignore even a 75% transfer bonus, let alone 150%. I don't even know how you get built elite status. Do you have to like-

You know, yeah, you have to spend a lot on the card, essentially is what it comes down to, I think. So- You have to earn a lot of points or something like that, right? Which includes your rent. So if you're paying rent, then it depends on how much you're paying

in rent and how much you're using your card. And there's different tiers. There's several different tiers. So at the entry level tier, it's a 75% transfer bonus. At the next tier up, it's 100%. Next tier from that is 125. And at the top tier, it's 150. And it is August 1st only. The way you asked made me question, wait, did I miss something in there? So that's why I hesitated, but I double checked to make sure it is August 1st. Only these rent day promotions are usually one day only. And to be clear, I don't use tons of Virgin Atlantic miles myself. I wouldn't speculatively transfer to Virgin Atlantic in my personal circumstances. However, like you said, at a 75% transfer bonus or more, I can see the situation where somebody might be willing to do that. And like you said, if you're attuned to the limitations and the best uses,

then I think you could do really, really well with this. But it's definitely not a no-brainer, like transfer all your bill points on August 1st. There's a lot of variables. But I think what excites me the most is that we saw 100 percent transfer bonus to Flying Blue just a couple of months ago. Now we see a 75 percent base level and up to 150 percent for people who are invested in the built rewards ecosystem. Like what's next? So I said that I feel like quite a few times this last year, like what's next with built? Something else is coming around the corner, I'm sure. So even though this one doesn't necessarily work for me, that's fine. I'm excited because there's something else is going to happen at some point that will, I think,

you know, I feel pretty confident about that. I don't know if it's intentional, but it seems to me that every three months is when they do the really big splashy rent day promotion. And so we'll see, you know, will the next one be like that? But it certainly makes me feel even more than before. I need to get a bill card and start earning bill points so that I'll be ready for the next one of these. I'm obviously won't be ready for this one. Right. Yeah. I actually opened a couple of cards this week and I really strongly considered the bill card and I'm still not sure that that I'm not going to because yeah, I mean, like stuff like this. I'm like, wow, if I can get six six dining on the first of the month

and then eventually transfer those at a 75 percent or 100 percent transfer bonus, I mean, man, it will make it worth using a built card first of the month for sure. Even just the regular base level earnings that get doubled on the first of the month. Now, remember, if you have the built card, I think you have to make five transactions a month in order to earn any points at all. So if you have the built card, you definitely want to make sure you're doing that. And if you rent, to me, it just seems like almost a no-brainer, unless you're the type who's going to go out and buy gift cards and you have access to buy money orders and you can pay your rent with money orders. I mean, there are ways to earn more points, but even still, like, let's say you,

you bought all gift cards at five X, right. To pay the rent. I mean, you're doing better at that level, but unless you're buying them all at five X, this is pretty darn good. Right. I mean, it's like two and a half points per dollar on the rent when you transfer it over at that's a pretty terrific return. So it really is. It's amazing. Yeah. All right. I, you know what? I'm just, I'm going to do it. I'm going to get a bill card. That's it. Do it, do it, Craig. All right. So speaking of Virgin Atlantic, so there's a little bit of news with Virgin Atlantic this week. So Virgin Atlantic has finally made it possible to book ITA Airways awards online. Now, ITA used to be sort of used to be Alitalia, the national airline

of Italy closed down and then ITA replaced it. And I think it's kind of the same thing. So ITA is the national airline of Italy and they are a Sky Team partner, but they haven't been bookable through other Sky Team partners, even though they are in the Sky Team and they've been there for quite a while now. But now you can book them with Virgin Atlantic right on the website. Seventy five thousand points one way in business class from some of the East Coast cities like New York and Boston. I think eighty five thousand from the ones that are a little farther. I want to say Miami and Chicago, if I remember correctly, and then 100K from like San Francisco or L.A. one way. So, you know, not the most amazing prices ever, but it gives you another option for a nonstop to

Europe if you want to get to Rome anyway. And also keep in mind that Virgin Atlantic, Greg's written about before, how they have decent pricing within Europe. And ITA, of course, flies within Europe too. So you may find it useful for that also. Yeah. Yeah. So I think this is great because, yeah, the prices like don't compare to, for example, if you could find Delta one award availability, then Virgin, you can use their points for 50,000 points one way to get from the USA to Europe. So the prices seem a lot higher. But if you consider the fact that at least for now, ITA's award availability seems to be like great. I just picked like a random date and, you know, found flights no problem. You know, Delta just never releases their Delta One award space. And a little bit easier to get like Air France or KLM for around that 50K mark with Virgin

points, but still not as easy as IDA. So it's great, I think, to have another option to get across the pond. And I'm willing to pay a little more for the convenience if it's available and going to roughly where I want to go. And of course, if it's available and you have built points, then you may want to take advantage of the transfer bonus because you're New York based, for instance, with the 75 percent bonus, you'd need to transfer forty three thousand built points to Virgin Atlantic. That's at the bottom level, 75 percent transfer bonus in order to have enough points for this award at the top level. I mean, I don't know if it was 20 something, 30. I don't know.

All I know is somebody was using his calculator while I was talking. Give it away on me there. Yes, I certainly was. So it'd be less. It'd be less anyway. But yeah, so that's good news. Good news for that. Now, speaking of award, good news.

We've got other good news, too. That's not the only one this week. Alaska Mileage Plan has made Starlux Airlines bookable on their website. Starlux, of course, a Taiwan- based airline and looks pretty cool. I haven't flown it, of course, but but it looks like a pretty cool, good business class experience from what I've seen. And you could book Los Angeles to Taipei for 60,000 miles one way, at least at the time of recording. So the cabins look beautiful. Pictures of their long-haul cabins. They appear to have a very high-end business class product. Lucky, One Mile a Time reviewed a Within Asia flight of theirs a couple of years ago.

And they're a new airline, by the way, so they're only a few years old is my understanding. And he reviewed them. He loved it. Like their service and everything was just fantastic. So I think it's very exciting to be able to fly from LA and soon San Francisco to Taipei and to be able to use Alaska miles for only 60,000 miles one way in business class is phenomenal. It's a little weird. So you could go to or from Taipei for 60,000 miles. But if you go anywhere beyond the mileage rates shoot way up and Alaska had done away with their award charts, so there's no guarantee that the 60K will stick around. But as things stand right now, award availability, at least as we record this, is wide open. And so you can go almost any time you want.

If you have the Alaska miles already, would say, go ahead and book it. Um, your worst case, if you have to cancel, you'll lose the, um, small partner booking for passenger. Yep. Yeah. Uh, so, you know, I think it's worth booking prospectively if you have the Alaska miles and, uh, then see if you can actually take the flight later. Um, yeah, I, I think that's great. I, you know, one other thing to, to mention on this and it just escaped my mind as I said that, great. You know, one other thing to mention on this, and it just escaped my mind as I said that, oh, is that you mentioned the availability is wide open. I wanted to add to that, not only wide open, but wide open in many cases for a lot of passengers. A friend sent me a message last night that he booked a family of five in business class and said, you

know, how often can you get a family of five in business class to Asia? You know, it's tough. So definitely worth a look if that intrigues you. Too bad I don't have enough miles for the next party of five adventure. True, true story. All right. So that was, let's see, Alaska. Amex has added a new transfer partner. Well, sort of an old new transfer partner, right?

So who do they add and why is it, sort of an old, new transfer partner, right? So who do they add? And why is it only sort of new? So they added Cutter. And Cutter uses Avios as their rewards currency. And Amex has long transferred to British Airways and to Iberia. And so by adding Cutter, it doesn't really change things because you could have before easily transferred your points from Amex to British Airways and then connected your British Airways and Cutter accounts and you'd have those if you want to transfer right to Qatar. So one thing I want to say is make sure if you're looking to book even Qatar Airways itself or one of its partners, check prices through Qatar, through British Airways, through Iberia, if Iberia has awards on that carrier, through avios.com, which is Aerolingus' version of Avios. And because they don't all, first of all,

allow the same partners to be booked online, which is really bizarre, but also they don't always have the same pricing. And sometimes they have the same mileage pricing, but different cash component pricing. And sometimes it's wildly different. So just something to keep in mind that Avios move from one to another. And so find the best one to book and book it there.

Yeah. And so like to back up half a step for the new crowd, the people who are new to this, one of the most common questions you get from newcomers is, oh, can I transfer my United miles to Singapore Airlines? And we say, no, no, no, you can't transfer between different frequent flyer programs. You could book a Singapore Airlines flight maybe with your United miles, but you're going to pay the United price. You can't actually move the miles. This is an exception to that. So that's the rule that I just explained that is generally universally true, except for the programs that use Avios. So British Airways, Aer Lingus, Iberia, and Qatar, as Greg said,

all share the same award currency, but they have different award prices. It's the weirdest thing ever. It's not common in the frequent flyer world. But the other thing to keep in mind, not only is to check all the Avios award options, but also look for all the Avios transfer bonuses, because if there's a transfer bonus to British Airways, you don't want to transfer to Qatar.

You want to transfer to British Airways and take advantage of the 30 percent transfer bonus, which is the case currently as we record this. So you wouldn't want to transfer to Qatar. You'd transfer to British Airways. You know, if you had 100,000 points, you end up with 130,000 Avios that you could then use through Qatar if you wanted to. So keep an eye out for that, too. OK, that's that. Airplane. Airplane now allows their awards to be. Okay. That's that era plan.

Era plan now allows their awards to be changed online. Why is that exciting, Craig? Well, uh, the, first of all, if you need to change your award, uh, you don't really want to be calling air Canada and waiting for an hour or two for someone to pick up to help you change it. No, you don't. Oh my goodness. I had to call Air Canada several times recently and it was like two hours each time. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it can be a nightmare. So the ability to do it online obviously is great. And another reason is it makes easier a trick that I posted about online, which is when Air Canada lets you book freely changeable awards by paying more miles when you first book it, and that's great because if you're not sure you're really going to fly that particular ticket, then if you have to cancel it later, you can get your miles and the cash component back without any penalty. But it's bad because you're paying more miles. And so if you actually do fly, you've invested more miles than you needed to. And so there's a trick, which I did recently, which used to take the flight, you know, book it as a refundable award and then go in later once you're sure you're going to take the flight and change it to a non-refundable. And you get the difference in miles back, which is pretty darn cool. So that's a little trick that is available now. And I think it'll be a lot easier with this new online option.

So I haven't had a chance to try that out yet. For sure. All right. There's our plan changing awards. And then let's see, Choice and Radisson. Choice and Radisson finally merged. And so it's all one program now. So if you want to book whatever Choice or Radisson properties, you're going to book it all through Choice these days, I guess. And so there are some bright spots and then, of course, some minor negative points. Right. So i guess let's start with the negative so what what went wrong here yeah well uh so steven did a great job of analyzing the the changeover um he he looked at award pricing for the radisson properties before the merger

and uh then looked at how much they cost after. So, um, now Radisson points converted to choice points two to one. Um, so we expected if there was no change in award pricing, uh, you'd expect the new price to be half of what it was before because you got, you, you now have half as many, uh, points in a way, because you had, let's say something cost 60,000 Radisson points before, you'd expect it now to cost 30,000 choice points. And he found that for the most part, that's generally true. They kind of mapped the Radisson award chart bands to the closest choice levels, and they were usually pretty darn close. But there was a pattern, which is at the very low end, so the cheapest Radisson properties, they cost a tiny bit more, not much. I mean, I wouldn't even worry about it, but a little bit more than half of what the Radisson price was. But on the top end, they tend to cost a little bit less than half. So, you know, those two things kind of out, you know.

Balance each other out. Balance each other out. Thank you for the words that wouldn't come to my mind. And just like I try to balance you out. You do a great job with that. In the middle of the chart, they work exactly right. And so, you know, I'd say they did a good job. The biggest negative is actually probably the fact that the choice program overall only lets you book awards a hundred days in advance, whereas with Radisson,

you could book much further out. So that to me is the biggest negative. But now we'll get to the biggest positive, which is room selection. Choice, and we've talked about this before, Choice often will let you pick any room or almost any room type for the same award price as a base room. They don't have like multiple tiers of award pricing within a single hotel. And so that's fantastic because you're looking now at sometimes I saw like in one case, a two bedroom suite for the same price as a one bedroom base room. And so you can suddenly get some amazing values by looking for those situations. Will it last?

We don't know. And what I mean by that is not all property, not all choice properties let you book multiple room types for that price. Like some of them just don't let you book their higher end rooms at all with points. And so I would not be surprised at all if like a couple Radisson Blues or whatever, notice people are booking these bigger rooms that they should charge more for and say, oh, wait, don't I don't want you allowing this for award booking anymore, because it used to be with Radisson. You'd pay a lot more for those rooms if you could book them at all. So so we'll see, at least for now. I think that's a huge positive. And so if you have a booking in the next 100 days,

I would jump on that as soon as possible and book it with your choice points. Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. Excellent. All right. So choice and Radisson that wraps that up. I think that brings us into this week's main event. It doesn't though. No. Oh, I'm sorry. It doesn't. Oh, my God. You know what? I looked at the word Delta in the notes. I was like, Oh, it's the main event. I skipped right over the headline there. Yes, card talk. So this week's card talk, we're talking about the Delta SkyMiles gold cards, both consumer and business. So tell me about these cards because you know all SkyMiles cards. They're nearly identical, and I'll point out where they're different. First, they both advertise a $0 introductory annual fee for the first year, and then they charge $99 per year after that. There's no foreign transaction fee on either card. Where they differ is the earning rate. So most of the time you're just going to earn one Delta Sky Mile per dollar not, but the business card gives you 2X

at select US advertising and shipping providers. So if you prefer to get 2X at supermarkets, that you'd wanna go with the consumer card. Both cards give you some useful perks. So both of them will give you a hundred dollar Delta flight credit after 10 K and purchases in a calendar year. So, you know, so if you spend exactly, let's say you spend exactly 10 K on the personal card in grocery stores, then you would earn 20,000 sky miles plus a hundred dollar Delta

flight credit. So it's not bad. Yeah. I think you could do better at grocery stores with some cards, but it's, it's not a bad way to use the, use the card. In general, it's neither of these cards are great for big spend at all. I like, I wouldn't use these for spend personally. I would use them for the perks and the perks. Well, let me get into that. A free check bag for yourself, plus up to eight companions. That's really unique. Most airline cards allow up to two companions or up to four. Delta allows up to eight. So if you have a big family and you have

a whole bunch of people on one ticket regularly, imagine how much you'd be saving on your tech bags. You're saving $30 per direction, per person. So that could easily, easily more than cover the annual fee, the $99 annual fee. These cards also offer when you're booking an award flight, if it's actually flying Delta and not one of Delta's partners, you get 15% off the award price when using your miles to book. So that's a great feature. And right there, it can make your Delta SkyMiles more valuable. You get priority boarding and 20% back on in-flight purchases. So food, drink, headsets. This does not include internet, for example. So there you go. It's not like a huge slew of benefits, but I think for people who fly Delta a fair amount

or you have a lot of Delta SkyMiles to spend, it's probably worth having one of these cards if you don't have one of the more expensive Delta cards already. For sure. Yeah, I think that that nails it. You know, you're going to fly Delta with any kind of regularity, but not enough to earn elite status. Then the check bags alone will certainly add up if you're somebody who checks bags anyway.

So and my family always does. So that would certainly come in handy for us. And the 15% award discount, when we talk about some of these sweet spots today, remember that all of them would be potentially 15% cheaper if you had this card. So or one of these cards. So that makes those things just a little bit better anyway. So I you know, personally, I have never had one of these Delta cards before because Delta miles don't work out well from my home airport. But I've recommended them to friends that live in airports where Delta is more useful. So, you know, I think like a lot of airline cards, it really boils down to whether or not you can use the perks. Most airline cards are not great for ongoing spend.

Like you said, you know, if you did enough to get the $100 discount and you value the 2x miles, it's an okay return on the 2x bonus categories potentially on that first 10 000 spend but it's not great it's not the best you'll do i mean you get yourself for instance an amx gold card not a gold sky miles but just an amx gold and get 4x at u.s supermarkets and up to 25 000 spend so that same 10 000 spent at a grocery store during your 40 000 points that you could then transfer 20 000 to to Delta and still have 20,000 left over, which you could cash out 100 for $100 discount on any flight you want and still have 10,000 miles. Obviously, the annual fee is more and it's not going to get you free check bags. So it depends on what your needs are.

And this card could be better if you're going to use those check bags for sure. So, so I think that, you know, one of these, when I say this card, I mean, one of these two cards, cause they're very, very, very similar cards, you know, in general, unless you're going to spend a lot, uh, in those two X categories that differ the supermarkets versus the advertising and shipping. Yeah, exactly. And, um, my, my niece and her husband, uh, recently visited us, did a round trip Delta flight with their young son, and they needed to check two bags. So I told them, sign up for one card, just one of you. And that covered the two check bags they needed to do. And so if they had paid both directions, that would have been $120 total in check bag fees. Right, right. Card paid for itself. Yeah, without anything else.

And without even considering the welcome bonus, right? Card paid for itself in one trip. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. And I've been facing that lately because I don't typically travel much in domestic economy on airlines other than Southwest.

So if I'm traveling domestically in economy class, it's usually on Southwest where bags are free. And internationally, I'm usually redeeming miles in business class. So my bags are usually free. We always check bags. I know a lot of frequent travelers. They never check a bag, but we always do. We travel with kids. We need the stuff.

But soon I've got a couple of flights within the United States and Canada that are in economy class. And checked bags are like the bane of my existence right now because, like you it adds up in both directions you know it's multiple people in multiple bags i mean so definitely it has its use case all right so decent potentially could save you some money for sure not these aren't cards that we say hey get this and spend you know your life savings on this card they're not that kind of return but they could make sense for the benefits. Like many cards with an annual fee, they could make sense if you're going to use the benefits. Exactly. Exactly.

All right. Now, now it's time for the main event. That's right. Main event time, ringing value from Delta SkyMiles. All right. We're going to talk about several ways you can ring value. And

why do we even need to say it that way? Because Delta SkyMiles have been a joke of the frequent flyer community for a long time now, and it's just been getting worse and worse over time because it's not easy. If you try to book, let's say, an international business class flight from the U.S. round trip to just about anywhere, you're probably going to thing for more like $180,000 round trip or even less. And so, yeah, it's just been getting worse and worse because it used to be there were more opportunities to kind of get around those inflated prices. But there are still quite a few ways. And so we're going to get into that. Um, first the easy one, if you have a Delta credit card, um, and that's a Delta gold, um, platinum or reserve, I don't think the free Delta blue gives you this. Um, you get a 15% discount

on your, um, SkyMiles awards awards as long as you're flying Delta. So this doesn't work if you're flying partners. And unfortunately, a lot of the tricks we're going to be talking about involve flying partners. So these don't necessarily stack with each other. Another thing, usually, at least Nick and I, when we're booking our flights, we're usually looking for one-way awards because, for example, sometimes we might use, I don't know, Air France miles to fly in one direction and Aeroplan miles to fly the other direction. It'll just depend on where the award availability is and which has the best pricing for that situation. And we don't usually look at round trip, but with Delta, you should look at round trip prices because often they price round trip cheaper than two one-ways. And so definitely check that out. And sometimes the savings can be dramatic. And this also blends into the next

segment, which is that they often have unadvertised sales, especially on economy flights. that Delta apparently is offering round-trip economy awards to Mexico and the Caribbean, starting at only 12,000 sky miles round-trip. So that's 6,000 miles each way. And round-trips to Asia and the Pacific start at 50,000 sky miles. So we're looking at maybe flying as far as Australia for 50,000 miles round trip. Now, again, this is economy, but keep in mind, those prices are before the 15% discount you get for being a cardholder. So it's even cheaper afterwards. So that's the type of thing. And unfortunately, Delta doesn't do a good job of advertising these. So we call them unadvertised sales. And so you just have to

often search where you want to go, maybe do the search regularly and watch the blogs and things to see if anyone announces these kinds of sales. But I bet there are plenty that come and go without anyone noticing it. Yeah. And if you are in the habit of searching one-way awards, you might miss some of these because sometimes these are a better price round trip than they would be one way. So, you know, I'm talking sometimes it'll cost you more miles to fly one way than it will cost you to fly around trip if you just don't know to look round trip. So, yeah, usually these sales require round trips. So you're not going to see these sale prices if you just look one way. So that's really important.

And the other thing that's nice is that when you see a – I think I'm accustomed to seeing a sale like the round trips to Mexico and the Caribbean that you mentioned from 12,000 miles. And mentally, I assume that that's being advertised that way because a flight from Miami to the Bahamas is going to be 12,000 miles. And if I'm starting anywhere else in the U.S., it's going to be far more. But that's not usually the case with Delta. Usually these sales from 12,000, it really is 12,000 from a whole bunch of cities, and they may not all be close to the Caribbean or Mexico. And then it might be a little bit more from a number of other cities, but it doesn't go up as dramatically and as quickly as I usually assume when I see prices from blah, blah, blah. I've just become accustomed to that being a marketing trick. But with the Delta flash sales, it's often close to accurate anyway. It depends on where you start, of course, but it's not just

the shortest flights that cost that much. That's a really good point. Okay. So the rest of what we're going to talk about, though, is using Delta SkyMiles to fly on partner airlines. That's where some of the best value can still be had. First up, the only one I'm aware of where you can fly between the US and another country on a partner and still get excellent value is WestJet. So WestJet's a Canadian carrier. So it's, I guess, they're a competitor with Air Canada and they partner with Delta. And Delta prices WestJet economy flights

12,500 points one way. And so, yeah, it's just straight up like that. It's like the old days. Remember the old days? remember the old days like a round trip economy flight anywhere in in like north america would be 25 000 miles in the old days with a lot of programs not just delta but yeah you don't see that anymore except here well i should say that it may not be every single flight i just recently booked an itinerary that

includes one leg on delta and one leg on WestJet flying to Vancouver, and it was 15,000 miles. So it wasn't the 12.5, not much more, don't get me wrong, about the same price. So it may not always, always be 12.5, but you can get it for that. And even at the 15 that I paid, I'm certainly not complaining about that because the cash price on the same ticket was $400. So 15,000 miles a piece for two passengers was a great deal and made it worth transferring membership rewards points. I helped a family member book that to Delta, even though there's a small fee for doing that, because at 15,000 miles, that was just a much more reasonable deal than paying $400 a passenger.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting that you run into that because I priced, for example, much more reasonable deal than paying $400 a passenger. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting that you run into that because I priced, for example, Calgary all the way to Fort Lauderdale and they have a nonstop flight, which of course priced at $12,500, but they also had one to JFK and then Delta onward to Fort Lauderdale, which that whole thing also cost $12,500. I wonder if it has to do with routes that WestJet operates a nonstop on versus routes that they don't operate a nonstop on. You know what I'm saying? Like maybe if they price the nonstop at $12,500, who knows? Okay, we're working things out with awards here.

But at any rate- I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. All right. We should change our phrasing to as low as $12,500 one way. As low as $12,500. And often $12,500. And often $12,500. There you go I don't know. All right. We should change our phrasing to as low as $12,500 one way. As low as $12,500. And often $12,500. And often $12,500.

There you go. There you go. All right. And that's a good one to keep in mind because flights these days to and from Canada can be kind of pricey sometimes. So that's a good one to keep in your back pocket. Yep. All right. Now, general rule. As long as you're flying from and to somewhere that's not touching the United States

or Canada, using SkyMiles to book a partner is usually a really good deal or even not great. You might be able to find slightly better deals with some other carriers, but at least you're not going to be in the stratosphere of point prices that Delta will charge if you depart from or arrive in US or Canada. And so they have a slew of partners and I'm going to give some examples of real world pricing that I found this morning just by poking around a little bit. Some examples are, let's say you want to fly Air France or KLM from Mexico to Europe, 75,000 points in business class. So, wow. That's- That's fantastic, yeah. It seems fantastic today. The funny thing is I'm kind

of laughing because it used to be, I mean, you have to go back like 10 years, but Delta used to charge less than that for a one way on Delta itself from the U S to Europe. But anyway, it's a great price by today's standards. And especially with SkyMiles. Within South America, you could fly LATAM. And so here's one example, Lima to Sao Paulo business class. That's a five-hour flight, the nonstop anyway, five-hour flight on a 777, 32,000 SkyMiles for a business class.

Yeah, I mean, that's certainly not bad at all, especially considering SkyMiles. I mean, remember, we're in SkyMiles here territory and that's. I mean, that's certainly not bad at all, especially considering sky miles. I mean, you're like, remember we're in sky miles here, territory and that's, I mean, that's competitive, so that's notable. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good one. Um, okay.

So now we talked earlier in the show about how you can fly star Lux with, uh, your Alaska miles to get to Taipei. Well, wait, wait, wait. Okay. Now you mentioned Alaska miles. I got to back up. Okay. Yeah. Cause you mentioned a lot. I got to back up. Okay. Yeah.

Cause you mentioned a lot. You brought Alaska into this and I got to mention that same LATAM flight that you can book with Delta for 32. You can probably book with Alaska miles for 25. So it's Delta is not your cheapest option, but it's competitive at 32. Right. And I would pay 32,000 sky miles over paying 25,000 Alaska miles because Alaska has more uses, more sweet spots, I'd say. Or at least more sweet spots from the U.S.

So, okay. We talked about Starlux and flying to Taipei. Okay. So I was saying before we were talking about how you can get cheaply in business class to Taipei from the West Coast US on Starlux with Alaska miles. So let's say you get there and want to fly onward to somewhere else. I looked at that and here's one example. You can book, you can use your Delta SkyMiles to fly China Airlines from Taipei to Melbourne, Australia for 75,000 miles one way. That's a nine hour flight on their Airbus A350 aircraft. to Melbourne, Australia for 75,000 miles one way.

That's a nine hour flight on their Airbus A350 aircraft. So yeah, that's pretty good. No, that's great. And it's nice. So China Airlines is based in Taipei and I flew them on a shorter Fifth Freedom route a couple of years ago and I was really impressed. It was a nice business class. So I would totally take advantage of that one

if I were looking to fly around in that part of the world. So that's a good one. All right. Yeah. So, uh, here's another one. Uh, that's a little bit higher price, but, uh, Korean air, suppose you want to fly all the way between Paris and Seoul, Korea. Uh, that's a 14 hour flight, 90,000 miles in business class. So, you know, again, if, if you're trying to, if you're trying to book a Delta award flight, you know, that's a 14 hour flight in business class, you'd be looking at four times that much, right? Probably. So, right. And I find these useful for piecing together trips, right? So, I mean, obviously if you're just, you know, you're the type of person who wants to go from the U S one destination and back then a paris to seoul flight probably isn't going to be something

super useful for you but if you're someone who's like well i've got two weeks i might as well see paris and seoul at the same time you know then i feel like these types of things can really come in handy for piecing together those types of trips yeah definitely and so I I think there's there's sort of two strategies for taking advantage of these uh both of them involve first getting out of U.S and Canada so getting across the Atlantic across the Pacific or going south south of the border um using either maybe use Sky miles to fly economy because sometimes there's good deals on that um or maybe use some other type of miles or or maybe even pay cash because you find a great rate to pay cash. But once you're there, then you could use your SkyMiles effectively to fly onward as long as there's a SkyTeam or other Delta partner that flies onward from that destination. And they

have to have award space as well, of course. So that's sort of the general strategy that I think is a great way of using your SkyMiles in general. Now, let me talk about finding award space on delta.com. So finding partner award space on delta.com, it's a little tricky because if you look, if you just pick a date and look for, let's say Paris to, to Seoul, um, what is likely to happen is it's going to come back with, I couldn't find anything. And then you have to just sort of randomly pick another date and try again. And it's a real pain. So I don't have really a way around that part of it. You do have to poke around and find different dates until you find one that where there's a date that works within a seven day period. So they look three days after

your date and three days before, as long as it finds any availability, whether it's nonstop or not, in those seven days, it'll show a seven day calendar of award availability. But don't stop there. Click price calendar. Now you're going to see a full month of availability. And now you can page back and forth by month. So for example, if you're really having trouble finding any day, you could zoom ahead to sort of the end of the schedule, or you might have more luck finding availability 11 months from now, and then get into calendar view and then back up to the month you're actually interested in, just as an example how you might go about doing that. The other thing, once you're in calendar view, if you really want a nonstop flight, if there's like a particular flight you're hoping for, you can filter then to nonstops only in that view.

And sometimes then you might not get any results back. But for example, in order to find the flight I did from Taipei to Melbourne, Australia, at first the calendar showed lots of days available. But when I clicked randomly on any date, it usually had Vietnam airways. So you go through, I think it was Hanoi to Melbourne. And that might be fine. I actually have no idea if they're a good airline or not. But then I went back to that calendar view, selected only show me nonstops. And then that took out about half the results. And then I could see which ones were the China Airlines nonstop. So that's how to use that. So there you go. That's a great tip because it'll make it a lot easier. And I think a key part of

that tip is maybe look like 10 or 11 months out, like pick a date that it doesn't have to be a date around when you actually want to travel. You just want to find the dates that are most likely to have some availability and oftentimes far in advance or very close in, you have better odds. So I would, you know, look at trying to look up next week

or like next year as far as, you know, where to find something available so that you can get the next Tuesday. And that way you're not going to be missing any potential days in between that had a word availability. Yep. Good point. All right. So that's, I think those are great tricks for finding Delta word space and really finding a word space in general is, I feel like that's another topic that's probably worth exploring for us, helping people figure out how to navigate all of those types of tricks, because there are different tricks and different programs. So that was a good one to share. All right. So I think that brings us pretty close to the end of the main event, right? So I mean, we've got a number of different ways that you certainly can

get good value out of your SkyMiles without tons and tons of effort at maximization obviously it's not going to be quite as easy as some programs but certainly not impossible all of those things that you mentioned the examples you gave are things you found available like today right i mean you looked it up before the show so they're all there they exist it's not just theoretical it's not it's not even hard um and so and you know we've talked talked before about, I like using this tool called Flight Connections. And what you can do within Flight Connections is filter to SkyTeam in this case, and it'll show you all the flights that SkyTeam Airlines provide. And so that'll get you most of Delta's partners. Now, it doesn't mean that every single one is going to have award space. They won't. And it doesn't mean that every single one is necessarily bookable through Delta. There's a few exceptions where they're not, but it gets you pretty close. Very good. All right. So there you go. There you have it. If you've got a pile of

Delta SkyMiles, then you've got a few strategies anyway to, you know, wring that value out of them. So speaking of awards, that brings us, I think, to the question of the week. And this week's question of the week has to do with partner awards. We just talked a whole bunch about partner awards. And so Katie wrote in with what I thought was an excellent question. Cancellation on partner awards. Katie says, it's happened to me twice now in the past 12 months that a partner award booking flight was canceled day of the flight. Aerolingus via Avios and AA via British Airways.

I was wondering if you might address how to best deal with cancellations of partner awards. What's the best strategy to get rebooked quickly? In each of my cases, the partner was not immediately aware that the flight had been canceled, thus making it difficult to rebook. There seems to be a delay in notification. My strategy in one case was to rebook myself on a different airline entirely and use points in order to not have to pay cash, and it cost a lot of points. And then she goes on to talk about what about travel insurance? Does that cover you in case of these types of situations? If you need a new positioning flight, you have a situation where the travel insurance from the Ritz card didn't cover that. So what's your

strategy? If you booked a partner award and day of travel, the flight gets canceled, what do you do? So I haven't had time to, this is like a pretty complicated question. So I'm hoping that you chose this one because you have a good answer ready. I asked because you're the Greg the Frequent caller. I thought for sure you would just have an answer off the top of your head. No, I mean, it's not easy. And in fact, Katie went on to say that she was looking to accommodate four passengers, which makes it even more difficult if you've got multiple passengers. And my goodness, that can be tough. No, I don't have a great strategy. So my thought when I first read this, and I was hoping you were going to have the same thought and prove my initial thought right, was that when you're within 24 hours of travel, I think it is on the operating carrier to rebook you. So I think that if they cancel the flight, they have to rebook you on one of their flights. But that next rebooking may not be for a couple of days. You know, if you got one of these irregular operation situations,

sometimes it could be the case where it's going to be days later. And that was something that Katie went on to point out that she had to book a different positioning flight because she would have if she waited for the reaccommodation, it was a few days later and she would have missed an international partner award booked with other miles. partner with your trans-oceanic flight of some sort. So what I mean by that is if you're flying on British Airways that you booked with your American Airlines miles, if you can fly American as your positioning flight, then I think you're likely in general to have more success in getting reaccommodated and getting the partners to work together and reaccommodate you. But that's not necessarily a given in all situations. So I don't know that that will always solve your problems. But like I said, I believe it's on them to rebook you on something. Of course, if you're flying to

and from the European Union with a European Union based carrier, then you've got a whole bunch of passenger rights with EU 261 that you can look up. So that's, you know, means of compensation and requirements in terms of what they have to offer you. But, you know, a lot of times I think you might just have to drop back 10 yards and punt and book something else. Now, I've been pretty lucky in all the years I've been doing this. I don't think I've ever had a flight canceled. Apart from the Southwest meltdown last year. I don't think I've ever had a flight, certainly not a partner award that I can think of that's ever been canceled at

all. So I've never actually run into that situation and had to solve it. Have you? Yeah. I can't think of any time that's happened to me either. So, I mean, I've had flight canceled,

but is it just a domestic flight, which the, I mean, I've had flight canceled, but is it just a domestic flight, which the, you know, the carrier rebooked me on something else. And so it wasn't, wasn't the same, not the same situation at all. All right. So long story short, we don't have a great answer for you, Katie, but now since neither one of us had a great answer for you, now I feel the responsibility to write a post about it. So I'm going to have to dig into it a little bit farther for you and get you a better answer than what we gave you. But certainly, by the way, if you're listening in and you have a good answer for Katie, feel free to leave that in the comments. If you're watching this on YouTube or you're, you know, or send it in to us via the giant mailbag, which of course, if you have feedback

or questions that you'd like to share with us, you can always send that to mailbag at frequent miler.com. So you'll want to be able to, or want always send that to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. So you'll want to be able to, or want to take advantage of that and let us know if you have a better answer for Katie than what we did. Unfortunately, we're just about out of time for today, Katie. So we're going to have to leave that one where it is.

I was hoping that Greg had the magic solution for me. By the way, on the travel insurance, I should have mentioned, it is true that they are not going to pay for a new positioning flight. They will cover your expenses if you need a hotel or you need to pay for meals and need to pay for if you lost your bags and you need to pay for clothes to replace it. Your credit card travel protections on the right credit cards anyway will cover those types of things, but they're not going to cover you rebooking a positioning flight for yourself. So that's a good point and perhaps a reason to actually buy travel insurance if you've got a lot of those types of awards booked.

Anyway, unfortunately, we're out of time for today. If you've enjoyed today's episode, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. You can join our email list. You can follow us on social media. Join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group because I bet if Katie asked that question there, there would have been some people who've been in that situation that would have had some additional feedback to add to. So that's a great place to ask questions like that. And, you know, we hope we'll see you guys again next week. Thank you very much. Yep. Bye, everybody.