Frequent Miler on the Air - Your ticket to the Delta Sky Club | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep290 | 1-17-25

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

In this episode, Greg and Nick will look at 4 ways to access Delta Sky Clubs, they'll reveal a hot reader tip for a free stay in Atlantis in the Bahamas, and they'll discuss the Air France / KLM Flying Blue devaluation. Check out the full episode below. (01:28) - It seems like a lot of people are running into issues lately with using the $200 platinum credit for Fine Hotels and Resorts.  (07:03) - United TravelBank glitch (now resolved) [Reported on Reddit] (09:50) - Air France KLM Flying Blue award prices increase by 15-25% to/from Europe Read more about this price change here. (18:02) - It's not too late to book Atlantis even if your Caesars Diamond status is about to go away. (20:28) - Sky Clubs vs other airport clubs Read more about how to get into Delta Sky Club Lounges here. (23:01) - Overall Requirements (24:12) - #1 Premium Credit Cards (24:27) - Amex Platinum (not to be confused with Amex Delta SkyMiles Platinum) Learn more about the Amex Platinum card here. (31:31) - Delta Reserve consumer or business Learn more about the Delta Reserve card here. See: How to get Delta Sky Club access for you and your family here. (39:58) - #2 Fly Delta One; or any Sky Team airline in business or first class (42:56) - #3 Elite Status Check out our blog post: Shortcuts to Delta elite status here: https://frequentmiler.com/delta-elite-shortcuts/ Or check out our episode "Easy path to Delta Elite status in 2024 Ep281" here: https://frequentmiler.com/easy-path-to-delta-elite-status-in-2024-frequent-miler-on-the-air-ep281-11-15-24/ (45:51) - #4 Sky Club Membership Learn more about Delta Choice Benefits here: https://frequentmiler.com/delta-choice-benefits/ (55:16) - Many times when I'm booking stays, there's only availability for standard rooms. How do approach getting an upgrade if there's no availability?

Today we'll talk about four different ways you can access Delta Sky Clubs, we'll share a hot reader tip about a complimentary stay at Atlantis in the Bahamas, and we'll discuss an Air France KLM flying blue devaluation that hopefully doesn't hurt as much as it sounds. Frequent miler on the air starts now. Today's main event, your ticket to the Delta Sky Club. We're recording this show in January of 2025. And starting February 1st, getting into Delta Sky Clubs with credit cards is going to change. You're going to be limited with platinum cards to 10 visits per year. With Delta Reserve cards, you're going to be limited to 15 visits per year. So we're going to be covering in today's main event, all of your options. What's the best way to get into the Delta Sky Club, if that's

where you want to be? Yeah, and if you've never been in a Delta Sky Club, I have to say I rarely ever fly Delta. But the few times that I have, and I've accessed the Delta Sky Club domestically, I've been really impressed. They're far better than the domestic lounges or their competitors. So it's something that certainly is desirable if you're going to be flying Delta a bunch, and we'll talk about ways to get in today. But don't forget, if you want to jump ahead to a specific segment, or you want to come back to something later on, you can always find the timestamps in the show notes. So just expand the description box to skip ahead or go back. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like the video or give us a review

and a rating, a comment. We always appreciate hearing from you and we check out all of those. All right, Greg, drag out this week's giant mailbag. All right. Today's giant mail comes from Timo. Now he's going to talk about in his mailbag entry, a perk of Amex Platinum consumer cards, which is how you get $200 in fine hotels and resorts or the hotel collection each year. So if you use your platinum card to prepay for a hotel stay, you get $200 back of that stay once per year.

So I wanted to give that intro because otherwise this won't make any sense. All right, so Timo says, it seems like a lot of people are running into issues lately with using the $200 platinum credit for fine hotels and resorts. For certain hotels, I found that specifically Hilton properties are affected. Amex doesn't let you prepay the booking through their website anymore. Instead, Amex will have the hotel charge you a deposit, which does not trigger the credit. When you make the booking, it seems like the booking would be prepaid,

but then at checkout, a screen will let you know that it's a hotel deposit instead. I just recently went through this issue in Vegas where the Palazzo will let you prepay, but not the Waldorf Astoria. Luckily, I found a workaround for this. An Amex agent can make a booking for you and can specifically tell them, you can specifically tell them to make it as a prepaid booking. I just successfully accomplished this by having an Amex agent via online chat book the Waldorf Astoria in Vegas. Wow. Well, that's a really good tip. I never would have thought about doing that. And yeah, data points about this has just been rolling in over the last few days before we started recording this. And it was a caught me off guard. So I wouldn't have known the solution off the top of my head. In my experiences in the past, those hotel deposits, I think have triggered the fine hotels and resorts credits because I mean, I used mine last year at Crockford's in Las Vegas. And it was a situation where yeah, they charge a first night deposit. But that was it did show up as a Crockford's charge, I believe I'm pretty I haven't gone back through my statements to check.

And it did, I think trigger the I thought it triggered the fine hotels and resorts thing. But we've had enough reports that maybe that's not that way, or at least not that way anymore. So that's a good tip. I don't know how you would know in advance for sure. It sounds like Timo is saying that near the end of the booking process, it somehow makes it clear-ish that it's a deposit and not a prepaid booking. That's what Timo says, yeah. I'm confused by that, though. I mean, because you have to pick pay now pay at the hotel later or pay with points when you check out right so it's got to be the pay now in order to use the FHR credit

but it sounds like Timo's saying that it's kind of doing a switcheroo near the end yeah you know maybe you are picking pay now but at the very end it shows that it's what you're paying for now is just a deposit I don't really know that's how I interpreted what Timo wrote that's that's what it sounds like is happening so just

pay you know close attention when booking one of these online and uh you know of course we'll come back on a future episode if we find out that these uh deposits do trigger the credit then you don't have to worry about it and that that's all good. But if they, assuming they don't, it seems like really good idea. Pay really close attention as you're checking out online. If it says this is a deposit, not the full amount of the stay, then maybe back out and try online chat to book it and make sure to ask them to book it as a prepaid reservation. The other thing, I think, was it Nick, was it you that noticed that a lot of them, a lot of the options now when you pick prepaid are showing different prices for refundable versus non-refundable? I didn't mention that, but I did notice that when I went to use my

FHR credit, I had opened a new platinum card just before the end of the year. And I noticed that, but no, it wasn't me who pointed it out to you. But yeah, a number of them now do have different pricing, depending on cancellation policy. Yeah. So you know, if that matters to you, and you're doing online chat, make sure you tell them which one you want. If that's an option for that hotel. Yeah, that's important. Yeah, I noticed a couple things I noticed at the very end of the year when I was going to make my FHR booking. So what I did, I had opened a new platinum card in December. And so I had to use my 2024 FHR credit. Now, I was obviously booking a stay in 2025. And I wasn't exactly sure about my 2025 plans. So what I did was I booked, I don't

know, three, four or five different FHR bookings for 2025, figuring that if I cancel one of them, I will still have a qualifying booking and won't get my credit clawed back. And past experience that's worked. So anyway, so I made several different bookings. And I don't know which of these I'm going to keep in which I'm not. But that had me looking through more properties. So I did notice the difference between non-refundable and refundable. There were more in the past. I feel like it's been very rare that I've run into a property that even had a non-refundable rate through Amex.

But now they do, which in some ways might be a positive if they're less expensive than the standard flexible rate type places. The other thing I noticed is there's a lot more properties, way more properties on FHR now than there had been. Like in Las Vegas in particular, for instance, there's quite a few more options. And that's not the only city where I found more options than I have in the past. So if you've looked at FHR before and not found things that match up with your needs, it might be worth another look because it seemed like quite a few places got added near the end of the year. All right. So next up, let's talk about what crazy thing

did United do this week? Yeah, this one is particularly weird. A lot of us have United travel bank cash, mostly because it's something where we can use our Amex Platinum airline incidental fee credits and earn some travel bank cash or if anyone has one of those ihd premier cards that gives you some travel bank uh cash every six months you might have some that way as well um and of course there's united ways of getting united travel bank cash anyway um united recently their systems decided that when you spend your travel bank cash, you should also spend an equal amount of credit card cash for any of their tickets. So here's what was happening. So people paid, let's say anyone paid for a ticket with both travel bank and credit card.

So for example, like it's a $400 ticket and let's say they pay $200 with their travel bank credit and $200 with their credit card, the $200 would show up initially on their credit card if you logged into their credit card account as pending. So it all looked right at first, but then when it would move from pending to actually paid on your credit card, it was charging the full $400 somehow. And then people would check their travel bank cash to see, oh, maybe it didn't charge my travel bank cash at all, but it did. So in that example, United was actually collecting $600 from you for a $400 ticket. A flight so nice, you got to pay twice. Yeah. So not surprisingly, a lot of people

who this happened to complained. And luckily, United has acknowledged the error and sent emails to people saying it was a technical error and that they were working on reversing those charges. So hopefully everyone who this happened to will get your money back as a statement credit to your credit card. Yeah, that's really weird. I can't imagine. I just, I think I would be very confused. And then I'd be very discouraged because I would think, what are the chances of getting a hold of somebody at United that's going to understand what happened and actually see it and find it and fix it but it sounds like actually people did so congratulations well done and hopefully that does get fixed crazy yeah yeah well this one i you know i think is easier to understand than a lot of like

miles and points types issues because it's like hey i was charged 600 bucks for a 400 ticket you know that's something that they need to correct for sure. So luckily that appears to be addressed, I guess. All right, next up we've got Bonvoyd. Who has Bonvoyd us this week? All right, this week we've got Air France, KLM, Flying Blue that decided to increase award prices. Now they did tell us that it was so that they could offer more award inventory at the low prices, but we're not actually seeing that yet. Maybe that'll come soon.

But what's the full scoop there, Nick? Well, so there's been a few increases. Economy awards from the US or North America, really, I guess, to Europe have increased from 20,000 miles each way to 25,000 miles each way. Premium economy has gone from 35,000 miles to 40,000 miles each way. And business class awards have gone from 50,000 miles one way to 60,000 miles one way. Those are all, of course, the minimum prices. Air France, KLM Flying Blue doesn't have an award chart, so prices can vary. So they could end up being significantly higher. Those are the lowest award prices. And so we were told that this was done in order to be able to increase award inventory. And like Greg said, we haven't seen

that yet. We haven't seen expanded award availability. Now, I think that this probably was done in that regard. Whether or not it's going to make a difference, I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of people looking at awards. Air France KLM Flying Blue has a pretty good award rate. And even when they don't have the lowest available, sometimes there are awards that are not totally unreasonable available, you might find more seats, you've got a lot of transfer bonuses to Air France, KLM, Flying Blue, and kids between 2 and 11 get a 25% discount. So all of that adds up to quite a bit of competition for the best Flying Blue awards. And so I think we were seeing less and less of the 50k available used to be pretty widely

available. But over the last couple of months, I've had a pretty hard time finding the lowest business class pricing available. And so surprise, surprise, I'm still not finding a ton available at 60k. But I think my speculation here is that they negotiate a deal with the airline. And I say they because I think most airlines kind of functionally the loyalty program in the airline, like ticket selling business are kind of separate things. And so I think that that Flying Blue is reimbursing the airline at a certain rate. And essentially, I think that the bans that they negotiate in terms of reimbursement just needed to go up in order to be able to balance it out and pay whatever it is the airline wants for those seats. So I think that that probably came into play there because cost of things in general has gone up. So it's a bummer. It sinks because there was no

notice, no notification. And that I hate even more than a price increase, because at the end of the day, the price increases here were 15 to 25%, and pretty minimal in terms of premium economy. But, you know, more, a larger percentage for the economy and business class awards, but still not terribly unreasonable, especially when you consider the fact that Air France, KLM, Flying Blue partners with everybody, all the transferable currencies transfer to them. So they're relatively easy miles to come by. So small-ish increases wouldn't bother me so much if there was some notice or some notification. But of course, these programs with dynamically priced awards don't do either of those things because there is no award chart so they don't need to they don't feel the need to let people

know in advance that prices are going to go up or to notify them after they have because they're not making any promises as is and that's one of the things i hate about dynamic award or dynamically priced awards so it's a bummer that that flying blue couldn't at least give people some notice that they're going to increase rates i don don't know, a month, two months, three months in advance, something in advance to give people the opportunity to use their miles before prices go up. That's the part that really bothers me. Yeah, yeah. thousand points for uh business class to europe is still a great deal um especially like from the west coast you know because a lot of programs charge more based on the distance and and so if you're flying from like la or seattle type of thing um it's 60 000 is terrific um but it's not

terrific if the awards aren't there and And so if they had really increased award availability to where it was like plentiful and you could get those type of awards at 60,000 points, I would actually look at this as the opposite of devaluation because I would trade that. I would trade paying a little bit more for wide open availability any day of the week.

But that at least hasn't happened yet and you know i'm saying it that way because we don't know what's happening behind the scenes like maybe they had to raise a minimum and maybe there's a long uh trail long time before revenue management whoever decides how many seats are available at the low level can actually make that happen you know yeah yeah, and I get the sense that that is a, you know, a discussion point at many airlines, you know, certainly Flying Blue isn't unique in that regard, in terms of, you know, of course, the loyalty program wants people to be able to redeem their miles. But of course, the airline wants to get as much as they can for the tickets

that they're selling. So you've got, you know, sort of two competing interests there. So, but Flying Blue seems to be pretty in touch with what travelers want. So I can imagine that if they're saying that they did this to increase award availability, that they at least intend for that to be the case, whether that's going to happen, anybody's guess. And if it doesn't, then it's a huge bummer. Because, you know, what difference does it make whether you said awards started at 50 versus they started at 60, if you're not going to make them available either way, then it really doesn't matter. But and with a dynamically priced chart, you know, some people brought up the fact that they could have just had more seats at 60k and still offered some at 50k. But I don't think

it's quite that simple. I think behind the scenes, the the way that the reimbursements work is more complicated than that. So, but anyway, we'll see. We'll see what happens. Fingers crossed that it does lead to more availability because Flying Blue has been a decent way to get availability for a family. I'm booked on them a couple of times this year.

And I think we flew them at least once last year, maybe, because it's just easier to find award availability oftentimes where it has been. It isn't right now. So let's hope it gets better and one thing i i really like about the program uh is is that they don't have just like you have the low price and then astronomically big price they they have it's more sliding scale so for example, sometimes when I've been very constrained, like I have to fly to Europe, let's say on this date, if I find, let's say a, I might find through flying blue, let's say 90,000 points for the exact business class flight I want for two people or however many people. And I'm willing to pay that when, when I have a lot of constraints on what I need to do. And so I like that about the Flying Blue program.

But yeah, as Nick said, we're just hoping that the award availability actually happens. We'll see. One other thing we should mention, because someone will ask us why we did and if we didn't, is that, of course, Flying Blue has surcharges on their awards. So these prices we're talking about are plus surcharges, and they charge around $200 or so, a little bit more than two, between two and 250 in surcharges, plus the taxes on award tickets. So that does make them more expensive than booking through American or United or Air Canada Aeroplan, one of these programs that does not have those types of surcharges. And that's annoying. I don't like the surcharges. But if the awards were available at 60k, then it's not necessarily so bad, especially if you're

able to book for multiple passengers, it could be still not bad. And comparatively, compared to other programs that have surcharges, again, not comparing to the programs that don't, but comparing to the programs that do have surcharges, they actually on the moderate low end you know you look at the surcharges that you know british airways has or the virgin atlantic historically had or you know even even programs that don't have astronomical ones like ana and and turkish still air france kale and flying blue is less than those so so yeah all right now let's talk about awards, points and more. So I want to give a quick update from a previous question of the week. And that is we had some question about Caesar's Diamond members. And I wanted to bring this up now because I know a lot of listeners will be losing their

Caesar's Diamond status at the end of January 2025. So you've only got a couple weeks left of Caesar's Diamond status. And so there was some discussion about whether or not Caesar's Diamond members can book their free Atlantis stay. So one of the benefits of Caesar's Diamond status is a complimentary four-night stay at Atlantis in the Bahamas, which I say complimentary, put quotation marks around that because you still have to pay a resort fee. And if you rent a car, you're going to pay for parking. And so it's not really free, but deeply discounted stay at Atlantis in the Bahamas anyway. And so there was discussion about since status for many of us is expiring on January 31st, would you be able to book a stay at Atlantis that occurs sometimes after January 31st? and so reps were telling people different things and we've now received a number of confirmed reports from readers who were indeed able to book stays at Atlantis beyond January 31st. In fact, somebody just today, I think, emailed to say that they booked one for June. They were told by the

reps at Atlantis that you can book now through June of 2025, even if your Caesar status is about to expire. So if you have Caesar's diamond status, you're looking to book your complimentary Atlantis stay, that might be worth doing now, or you may be able to do it now for a future trip. And I'm going to point out that the reader who told me that they booked one, I think for June, booked it, not even sure they're going to make the stay, but they figured that having a free Atlantis stay booked might enable them to match with some cruise line at some point and say, hey, listen, I've got this free four-night stay from Atlantis. They gave me four nights for free. What can you give me in terms of a cruise? So they were just

looking to leverage that quote-unquote free booking into something else, which I thought was a smart strategy. So I'm trying to get those booked up. The thing is, if you call Caesars, they're going to tell you, no, your status expires January 31st. You can't book it beyond that. But that's not how you book this anyway. You have to call Atlantis in the Bahamas to book it. And Atlantis will book it, apparently. So that's the key thing to know. If you're calling Caesars and they're telling you you can't, that's not who books it anyway. You've got to call Atlantis. So call Atlantis. They're the ones that matter. They're going to decide whether to charge you or not. Apparently they won't.

So get on that quick. That's that. Let's talk about this week's main event. Main event time. Your ticket to the Delta Sky Club. So the Delta Sky Club is known to be better than like American Airlines clubs or United clubs. At least their regular clubs. Both United and American have special clubs just for their like international first class or international –

for certain situations and certain people can get into the really special clubs. But for their main clubs, the regular United Club, the regular American Airlines Club, in general, we'll find that Delta clubs are better. There's, at least in terms of the catering, like I can go into any Delta Sky Club and be sure that I can get a decent meal, like an actual meal. Whereas you go to American Airlines Club, at least these days,

maybe this will change in the future, but you get a snack basically for free. You might go to buy a meal. It's kind of a snack. Yeah. So I really like the fact that, you know, Sky Clubs are much better. I fly Delta a lot. So I go to Sky Clubs a lot. And I appreciate the savings and not having to buy meals at airports and have a place where I can, you know, know I can sit down and get internet and all that kind of stuff. But, you know, there are, it's not easier, cheap, necessarily to get access to Sky to sky clubs so we're going to talk about four approaches for getting in yep okay so the four approaches that we're going to talk about and we'll dive into each one a little bit more in a few minutes but first up is premium credit

cards because there are certain premium credit cards that will give you access to delta sky clubs uh you also alternatively, could fly Delta One or a SkyTeam airline in business or first class on an international itinerary, and that would potentially get you access or should get you access also. Elite status can potentially get you into Delta Sky Clubs, though not elite status with Delta, right?

We'll talk more about that in a few minutes. Details are complicated. Yeah, and then finally, you could buy or get a Sky Club membership. And so if you bought a Sky Club membership, then you'd be able to visit. But those are fairly expensive. But we'll talk more about that too. So those are the four main areas, right? That's right. Now, with all of them, there are some overall requirements. First of all, you're not going to get

into a delta sky club unless you're flying delta or one of delta's partners on the same day just period so you're flying united or whatever you hope to get in the delta sky club at you're out of luck the other thing and we should mention that it's not necessarily depending on the method flying a delta partner won't always get you in right like depending on your method of access then flying a delta partner might not qualify you like for instance the amex platinum card i i couldn't get into the delta sky club and flying virgin atlantic um you know even though it was a code share and it was a partner in that case when i was flying an economy class i couldn't get into the lounge so even the partnerships matter a little bit here um and then uh you must not be flying basic economy uh with

most of these uh ways of getting in there's one kind of really rare exception where when you're flying basic economy on an international flight you might be able to get in. But other than that, those are two rules that go across all of these approaches. So let's talk, let's break them down, right? Let's get into the premium credit cards. So premium credit cards, I guess, we've got to talk a little bit about which cards get you access and how you get access, right? Yeah, yeah. So in general, we're going to be talking about Amex Platinum cards and Delta Reserve cards. And when we talk about Amex Platinum cards, we are specifically not talking about the Delta SkyMiles Platinum card from American Express. We're talking about the other Platinum cards from American Express. Confusing. I know, it's so confusing. But the more expensive Platinum cards from american express that don't really have

anything to do with delta can get you into delta sky clubs make sense of that make sense of that the one branded by delta will not get you in the one that is branded american express platinum will but i mean they're totally different cards though they are totally different cards and they just happen to have platinum in their name okay anyway regardless of what credit card method you use um to get into a delta sky club there are rules beyond the two that i just mentioned like so so i'll re-say the ones i said before which you must be flying delta um same day uh you must not be flying basic economy if you want to use a credit card to get you in, um, the credit card does not get you free guests.

Like it's for yourself getting in, um, you, each card has a limit to how many visits you can do. Unless you spend $75,000 within a calendar year, then you get a waiver on that limit. Um, without the waiver, if you don't have the waiver and you exceed the limit you could pay fifty dollars per visit to keep going after you've hit that limit and if you want to bring guests you can pay fifty dollars per person to add up to two guests or your immediate family so nick could bring you know his his wife and two kids but he's still paying $50 for each of them to get in. My kids will not eat $50. Well, my seven-year-old might eat $50 worth of food. A younger son will

not. Yeah. So Nick will leave his younger son out in the hallway. He's going to wait. Don't wait outside. All right. So that's how you can get in. And so those are your premium card options. So which one, I don't know if there's a universal answer here but which one would make the most sense well let's dive into the details first about mx platinum cards again not the delta sky miles platinum but platinum cards these limit you to 10 visits per year actually 10 visit days per year because the idea is like within a day or if you let's say you uh you could visit multiple sky clubs or you can exit a particular sky club and go back into it all within the same day that still just counts as one visit anyway 10 visits per year

and again if you spend 75 000 on platinum card, you get a waiver that lets you get unlimited visits that year and all of the next calendar year. There's three different types of consumer platinum cards that this applies to. There's the regular platinum card. There's the Schwab platinum card and the Morgan Stanley platinum card. And then there's also the business platinum card and the morgan stanley platinum card and then there's also the business platinum card so there's really four different cards you could get uh that'll get you into sky clubs if you have more than one you you would the the your allowance

you know increases accordingly so you you get 10 per card not per per you not per card, not per, per you. Not per card holder, but per 10 per card. Yeah. So, yeah. So if I have, let's say I have a Delta reserve. No, I'm sorry. We're not talking about reserve yet. Let's say that I have an Amex platinum card and a business platinum. So I have a consumer platinum and a business platinum card. So I get 10 visits with each of those. Could I bring my wife and guest her with one of the visits for my second card? No. I mean, you could, but you'd still have to pay the $50 for her. So no, in that case, in a family, if you want to have multiple platinum cards,

you'd be better off one of you having one and the other person having the other. And then you could each get in with your own card up to 10 times each. Yeah. Now, all these Platinum cards, they're not cheap. They have $695 annual fees. Now, they come with tons of perks that could be well worth that $695 fee. And not just perks, but lots of rebates too. So you could potentially get your $695 back and more if you get all those rebates. So it very well could be worth it to you even without the Sky Club access.

Now, let's say you don't want two cards, but you do want your spouse to be able to get in on his or her own. You could add them as an authorized user. Now, that'll cost $195 if you have a consumer platinum card, or you can add them as an employee, get an employee card for them if you have a business platinum card, but that costs $350.

Wow. Yeah, that's pricey. Although I say it's pricey, and you probably have to compare with the opportunity cost of putting $75,000 spend on one of these to bring a guest you know if you're going to be traveling regularly with somebody else and you're looking to guest them in and and you even have the capacity for $75,000 and spend on a single card it seems like a high opportunity cost to me because it seems like the platinum card is likely not your best option for most types of purchases.

So spending $75,000 on it probably means that you're earning suboptimal value on most or some of that $75,000 spend. So then I would say, okay, well, does it make more sense to just pay for an authorized user? And certainly it would make more sense on a consumer card than a business card here, but for most people most people i think given the difference in cost absolutely yeah i think if you're if you're looking at authorized users you really should be looking on the consumer side because the price difference is so big yeah now i'm sure some people say well what is the business expense i can write it off but yeah but the difference in cost here is pretty big so it's probably still better on the consumer side now one cool thing if if you do decide it's right for you to have a consumer card and add several authorized users, let's say, and if you do meet that 75K spend waiver, that waiver applies to not just you, but your authorized users as well.

So, you know, at least your waiver spend has more impact because of the authorized users. With the Platinum card, the other thing is you get into other lounges besides Delta Sky Club like the Centurion Lounge. And that same 75K waiver would also work to get you the ability to guest people into the Centurion Lounge. So it has some other benefits as well. But still, I totally agree with nick that the opportunity cost could be very high if you have other cards that would earn a lot more points for that same spend then it might not be worth it even if you're able to spend 75 000 yeah yeah okay so all right so that's the amex platinum cardinum card. Again, the Amex Platinum, not the Amex Delta Platinum.

The Amex Platinum that has the image of the centurion in the center of it. That's one option, but not the only card option. No. So Delta cards, there's multiple Delta credit cards you could get. There's the blue fee-free card. There's the gold. There's the platinum. And there's the reserve that's the most

expensive of the cards uh the delta reserve and that gets you sky club access there's there's two versions of the delta reserve card there's the consumer and business card they're nearly identical um but uh and they have the same 650 annual fee, which is a little bit less. The Platinum cards cost $695, so the Delta Reserve is $45 cheaper per year. Don't spend it all in one place. The Delta Reserve cards, though, give you more visits. So they give you 15 a year instead of 10, so 50% more visits per year. It has the same $75,000 waiver ability. Delta Reserve Card,

though, also gives you four guest passes per year. So if Nick had one of these and wanted to bring his family in once, he could use three of those passes to bring them in as guests. And then on the next visit, he could bring in just the son that eats more. Right. Right. My wife and the non-eating son can sit outside the club for a bit. Or maybe she'll go in the club with the hungry son. No, she can't because the primary cardholder would have to go in.

They won't mind at all. Okay. That's a recipe for disaster right there. Right. Yeah, we do not recommend this for marriage health. So, all right. But overall, if you're interested in visiting the Delta Sky Club more often, then this might make sense because it's less expensive and it gives you the guest passes. Additionally, on top of giving you more visits, it gives you the guest passes. Additionally, on top of giving you more visits, it gives you the guest passes. And of course, you know, if you're interested in Delta Elite status,

there's other reasons you might want to have the reserve card because you'll earn MQDs at a better rate with spend on your Delta reserve card. And of course, also there's other perks on the reserve card, the annual companion certificate and whatnot. Yeah. so having any of the uh premium delta cards gives you a 2500 mqd head start each year which if you don't understand what that means that's fine that's that's a thing to get you closer to elite status but uh the thing i want to point out is if you're interested in getting this 75 000 unlimited access waiver because you you spend a lot um the downside is you're earning delta sky miles which aren't worth that much compared to like unlimited access waiver because you spend a lot. The downside is you're earning Delta SkyMiles,

which aren't worth that much compared to like, I'd much rather have membership rewards points than Delta SkyMiles. But if you're into elite status, $75,000 spend would get you $7,500 worth of MQDs. Add that to your $2,500 head start, you've got $10,000 of MQDs before you even step foot on a Delta airplane. So you're already, based on the rules, the elite status acquisition rules right now in 2025, that gets you all the way to gold status before you step foot on a plane.

And then of course, the actual flying you do would probably make, you know, if you're a relatively frequent Delta flyer, I think getting to platinum status, which is like second to top tier would be really easy for a lot of people. And then of course, if you normally get like as high as gold or platinum status through flying, you're probably looking at getting, you know, looking at diamond status as what you might be able to achieve. And that has a lot more perks than any of the other lower statuses. So yeah, if you're interested in delta elite status, and you're interested in spending $75,000, that combination is really powerful. So lastly, authorized users are a little bit cheaper than with platinum cards. So the reserve authorized users cost $175 versus $195 with the platinum card.

Not a huge difference. It's still fairly expensive. Oddly, so the Delta Reserve authorized users that you pay for um you could also get free ones but they don't get any benefits but once you pay for do get access to sky clubs but they don't get things like free check bags or any of the other normal interesting perks you'd expect from having a delta card that you've paid for so um just something to think about yeah that's interesting yeah you know i don't fly Delta often at all, very rarely. If I were going to fly Delta regularly enough

that I would want a lot of lounge access, then I probably honestly would rather have the reserve card because if I were going to fly Delta a lot, then elite status would probably start to matter to me. So doing some spend on this card, getting the head start, doing some spend on this card will both be valuable. And the annual companion certificate would be pretty valuable too if I were flying Delta that often. So I actually think that I would prefer that strategy if I were flying Delta regularly. As someone who only flies Delta now and then, I find ainum card to be worth the sticker price without Delta

lounge access. So certainly the Delta lounge access is like icing on the cake. You know, every now and then I can visit a Sky Club with my Platinum card. So as a very occasional Delta flyer, the Platinum card works out better for me. But if I flew it more often, I think I would have a reserve card. Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. I think if you fly Delta often and you value Sky Club visits, which I think probably most frequent flyers do, or you value things like the annual companion ticket. I mean, that alone could make it a better option over the platinum card, which doesn't have that, if you value that. But it really depends. I mean, I know a lot of people that just, it's so rare to be able to book a Delta ticket within the rules

of the companion ticket and find availability for it that they don't value it at all. So anyway, so yeah, that's where if if you fit that profile i think the reserve approach works for you i think if you don't fly if you fly delta only occasionally platinum card makes a lot more sense it has so many perks that if you're a frequent flyer if you're frequent traveler so many perks that could be valuable to you um that uh have nothing to do with delta that um you know i think in general it could be a good bet i agree okay so all right so that's the credit card that's one way to get into delta sky clubs right but that's only one out of the four yeah

yeah so so that that i think is the most like likely of our frequent listeners that they're going to be interested in one of those two. I want to say, too, for myself, even though I'm a frequent Delta flyer, I took advantage of a one-time opportunity to get multiple years of status by rolling over these old MQMs. So I don't need the Delta Reserve card. So I just have the Delta SkyMiles Platinum. And I have a whole bunch of Platinum cards, Business Platinum and Regular Platinum, because I take advantage of different deals for welcome bonuses, different deals for upgrading. I upgraded a few cards from Delta. It's not from Delta, from business gold to business platinum. So for those of us that are playing around with cards a lot

and getting different offers, it might be that you have a stable of platinum cards available to get into Sky Clubs as needed. And that's what I'm doing right now. And we'll see. I don't know if that'll be my long-term approach or not, but that is for now. It makes a lot of sense.

And I think there's a lot of people out there that are in that boat these days. So yeah, I'd be in the same boat. Even if I were flying Delta a lot right now, I guess I would probably not get a reserve because I've got enough ways to access the club. Although I might want status. If we're going to fly enough to use 10 or 15 visits a year, then presumably I'm traveling delta enough that i status would matter more to me than it currently does and of course like craig said he doesn't have to worry about status for a while so not an issue for him all right yeah so that's how we get in uh with premium cards right but what about other ways to access the delta sky clubs yeah so so the next thing that I think would be most popular,

most likely to be used by our audience is fly Delta One. So fly Delta's business class or fly any Sky Team partner in business or first class. And so the latter is mostly for international flights. I think it's entirely international flights for business class. With Delta, they do have some Delta One flights within the U.S. They tend to be the longer flights like from New York to L.A. or whatever. But not all of those longer flights feature Delta One. But if you're on a flight that features Delta One and you fly in that cabin, then you should have access to the Sky Club on that day.

Do note that if you booked first class domestically, that's not getting you in. You have to be in Delta 1. And also, I think it's important to note that it's okay if you booked the flight with miles from some other partner. And it's okay if you're not flying Delta, if you're flying Air France or something, because they're a partner. As long as you're flying business class, maybe you booked your Air France flight with Virgin Atlantic miles, you should be able to get into that Delta Sky Club same day. Yeah. And I'm glad you used that example at the end, because I think that's a point of confusion for a lot of people. You don't need to have used your

Delta miles to book your award ticket. You could have booked an award ticket on an entirely different Sky Team airline with some other airlines miles. And still, you should be able to get into the Delta Sky Club same day. So yeah, that's that's good. And I think the most confusing part for people that are unfamiliar with this stuff is what Greg said when he said, if you book Delta first class, that's not enough. So even if you're on a transcontinental, if it doesn't have Delta one in a cabin, they're going to market it as Delta one, right? Otherwise it wouldn't, wouldn't count. Like if I'm flying something across the country, like, I don't know what

routes they have. Cause I don't fly Delta that much, but like New York to Seattle, if there's no Delta one or New York to Portland, I don't know what routes they have because i don't fly delta that much but like new york to seattle if there's no delta one or new york to portland i don't know what they have for routes yeah it has to be marketed that's exactly right and and usually you you could tell when you're flying it because if it's not delta one and you're up front you're in a you know bucket recliner first class seat um if you're in delta one you're in a live flat situation so it's very obvious uh when you're actually flying it but you're in a lie flat situation. So it's very obvious when you're actually flying it, but it might not be as obvious to you when you're booking it, especially if you booked it with like partner miles where you're, you're maybe not seeing the full,

full details of what you're getting. But anyway that is true. You are not, if you're in, if you're in first class Delta first first class as opposed to Delta one, that does not get you in. Very good. All right, so that was method number two. Again, that's flying Delta one or a Sky Team in business or first, Sky Team airline in business or first class.

How about number three? Number three is elite status. How can they get in with elite status? Yeah, so if you have delta gold status or higher and you're flying select international flights you have to be in uh like premium select or first class or delta one then you can uh not just you but you plus one guest could get into Sky Club, but that guest has to also be in that premium cabin. And so there's a lot of rules there. It's too complicated for us to lay out the full thing.

We will put a link to our blog post on how to access the Sky Club into the show notes. And that has the full details. But this one I think is really rare, like that you the full details. But this one, I think, is really rare, like, that you have that combination. I mean, because, you know, already, if you're in Delta One, you have access. So I'm not really sure why they listed that. But anyway, that's what you can do there. Yeah. So elite status, generally speaking, with the U.S. airlines, if you have elite status with the United or with American or with Delta, in most cases, you're not going to be able to access the lounge based on your elite status.

If you're just flying an economy class. Right. I mean, there's there's some some things here, like Greg said, it gets a little little complicated but it's not like a given right right now for those who know the delta program or even actually other programs you know that uh like american when you get enough loyalty points you can select lounge uh passes or lounge access but um and delta if you get high enough status you can select um club membership which we're going to talk about later but we're talking about just you know sort of being able to get in just because you're elite status there are limited situations where having delta elite status gold or higher gets you in let's leave it at that yeah there you go now where it gets a little more interesting is if you have if you have a Sky Team Elite Plus status with anyone other than Delta.

So this is like the equivalent of Alliance-wide status with other airlines. So One World has their One World Sapphire, One World Emerald, One World Ruby, I guess, too. Star Alliance has their Star Alliance Gold. So different alliances have status where if you have status with one of the airlines in the alliance, it gives you this alliance-wide level of status. So Sky Team Elite Plus is the higher of two levels of Sky Team status. There's Sky Team Elite and Sky Team Elite Plus. And so if you have Sky Team Elite Plus based on your status with some SkyTeam airline, then maybe you can get into a Delta Sky Club. Yeah. So, a couple of examples of how you get Elite Plus is if you have Air France KLM flying blue gold or higher status, that gets you there. Virgin Atlantic gold gets you there.

So, those are a couple that a lot of people might have from status matches and things like there. So those are a couple that, you know, a lot of people might have from status matches and things like that. So something to keep in mind. Then you have to be flying an international SkyTeam flight in order to access a SkyClub using your elite status. But you could be flying economy. That's fine, as long as you're flying an international flight. And here's something kind of interesting. Or you could be flying a domestic flight that connects to an international flight. So maybe, for example, you're flying from Detroit to JFK and then from JFK to Europe on SkyTeam Airlines. Then in Detroit, you would get in even though your first leg is only a regional flight where normally your SkyTeam status wouldn't get you in.

If your whole itinerary was Detroit to JFK, your SkyTeam Plus would not get you into the club because it connects to an international. It would. One interesting thing about this approach is that if I believe from the rules, from the terms and conditions, you could be flying basic economy on this international flight and you should be able to get in. There's nothing barring base economy. And I'm pointing that out because every other way, including having a club membership, says that you can't get in if you're flying base economy. This one does not say that. Yeah, that is interesting. So let us know if you've done this in the comments or if you've run into problems when you've been in base economy using this method. And that's the SkyTeam Elite Plus method, meaning you have SkyTeam Elite Plus status with some other SkyTeam airline.

And you're looking to get into the lounge on one of these types of tickets. It's got to be an international ticket, like Greg said. So keep that in mind or connecting to an international flight. But connecting, I assume it have to be under the same PNR, right? It have to be one ticket from Detroit to Europe. Yeah, I assume so. Yep. Okay.

So that's your Sky Team status method. And then the final way that you get into the Sky Club is with a Sky Club membership, right? Yeah. Yeah. get into the sky club is with a sky club membership right yeah yeah and you would think that this would be the simplest because you'd think you could just you know log in and and buy your membership but no you have to have if you want to buy a membership you have to have delta elite status interesting i didn't know that yeah yeah silver or higher um so that's, I find that just kind of weird, but whatever. Um, and, uh, if you buy it, you do get unlimited access. It's not limited to 10 or 15 per year or anything like that, but you're going to pay.

I mean, so individual membership, $695 per year. Um, that's like zero guests, unless you want to pay, you know, that $50 per guest type of thing. And executive membership where you can have two guests, $1,495. Wow. Wow. Yeah. That's pricey, huh? It's not cheap.

Now, that one gets you up to two guests or you get your spouse or domestic partner and any children under 21. So if you have a large family, I could see that. And you go to Sky Clubs a lot. I could see that being worth it, I guess. Yeah, I mean, if you've got the Brady Bunch, then maybe this does work out, right? I mean, you've got a big family. But wow, you'd have to be, A, either have a big family like that, or B, be traveling through Sky Clubs, flying on Delta, and really need a lot of access to Sky Clubs. Because if you break that down per visit, it's pricey unless you've got a lot of visits.

Right, right. It really is. So, yeah, I mean, I imagine there are situations where this makes sense, but I think for the vast majority of people, you're better off with one of the credit card solutions for your frequent access. But, again, that's just going to status then you know delta diamond says which is a top tier status gets you gives you three diamond choice benefits each year and you could use up two of the three to get your uh to get an individual membership or use up all three to get a uh executive membership um so that you know if you you don't value things like the global upgrade certificates, I could totally see that as a good option. But it does mean that you're limiting the value of your choice benefits

to about $500 each if you take the executive option and about, what, $350 each if you do the individual option, which is low, I think, for what to value those choice benefits at. But still, that might be something you're interested in. Yeah, I think, you know, so actually, I'm glad you brought that up. So it's worth a little math on that. First of all, I would say, you know, if you're somebody who's flying Delta weekly, let's say you're flying, you know, out for work on Mondays and back home on Fridays, kind of a thing or whatever the case might be for you. If you're flying weekly, maybe one of these memberships makes sense because you're talking,

you know, like 104 days a year that you're going to potentially be visiting sky clubs you know assuming that you're flying weekly and it's delta every week then anyway uh one of these might make sense to have one of these memberships um but so okay let's let's let's talk quickly though about what greg just said because if you were to use it on an individual let's say you're flying by yourself, you work, right? So you're flying out and back every week. So you're like, OK, I'm going to use this 100 times this year. So it's worth the $695 because it's costing me like seven bucks a visit or whatever.

So it's worthwhile for me to buy a membership. OK, fine. I won't argue with you too hard on that point. But if you look at using the choice benefits and you say, oh, well, I'm going to use two benefits, and I'm going to get 100 uses out of this. And each use is worth $20 to me. So it's a $2,000 use of my choice benefits, right? Well, no, because you got to compare against the 695 that it would cost you to buy access, not whatever you value each lounge visit at individually, because Delta is telling you what unlimited access costs, cost 695 for an individual 1495 for a family. So that's why you really do have to say, okay, well, I'm effectively

accepting $350 per choice benefit, if I'm using two on the individual or 500 per choice benefit on the, you know, the executive. So do think about it in that way versus the cash cost of buying that access. And then, you know, you just have to run the numbers, I guess, on the other options. But I think even as somebody who doesn't fly Delta much and doesn't pay a lot of attention to the elite program, I imagine that it would be possible to get far more than that in value out of the other choice benefit selections. So I would probably err on the side of one of those. But if you don't have any flexibility and you're like, no, I'm flying every week for Delta. I don't have flexibility to take other trips and use these other benefits. Maybe this is a good deal. Yeah. I mean, I think you said it right. I do want to point out like a couple of really valuable diamond choice benefits that you really ought to be thinking about. There's the ability to get global upgrade certificates. You could get four of them with one choice benefit selection, which lets you

get upgraded to business class. I mean, there are rules about what situation you could get that upgrade, but I still find those very valuable despite those limitations. If you have a Delta credit card, if you have a Platinum SkyMiles credit card or a Reserve credit card, you could just choose to get $700 from one of your choice benefits. I mean, right there. For one. So then just buy the membership and take your $700, right? It would be insane. Yeah.

It would be insane to use two choice benefits. For $700 when you could just get $700, right? It would be insane, yeah. It would be insane to use two choice benefits for a $695 membership when you could use one to get $700 and buy the membership. Yeah, that's a perfect example. You could gift two people gold medallion status with one of your choice benefits. Anyway, so those are some of the like, you know, more, more valuable things that you should consider, I think, before using up all

your choice benefits on a Skype on a membership. And surely we have a post about which Delta choice benefits are best that you can check out. And we'll make sure that there's a link in the show notes to that. Speaking of links in the show notes, there also will be a link in the show notes to a post about how to get Delta Sky Club access for your whole family, right? That's right. That's right. So check out the show notes for links to those resources. All right, let's talk about this week's question of the week. So this week's question of the week is about suite upgrades. And this is something that we've talked about in passing. But a question came in via email. And this is something that we've talked about in passing. But a question came in via email. And I realized that although we've talked about it in passing, and maybe

somewhat assumed some knowledge here, I don't think we've really had any dedicated discussion on this. So I thought this was a good one. Let's see Aaron writes in and says I'm high at globalist Hilton Diamond, Marriott Bonvoy, Platinum Elite, United 1K, American Executive Platinum, and Amtrak Select Executive, mostly from reading you guys. Many times when I'm booking stays, there's only availability for free nights for standard rooms. I was wondering if you could do a segment on paying cash to upgrade and if it's available and how to get that done. I came across this once. They just charged me the difference in cash between the cost of a standard room and a suite. One time, because I'm globalist, they split the difference with me.

Do you know how this works at other hotel brands like Marriott Bonvoy or Hilton? Thanks. And so, or I guess this was Adjo, I'm not sure how to pronounce the name. But at any rate, so I know that we've sort of discussed this in passing. Is there any sort of standard way to upgrade? What do you do if you want an upgraded room? Are you just out of luck if there's only standard rooms available? What's your approach? Well, first, there is no standard. Each hotel does it their own way.

And I would guess each hotel manager or desk agent, whoever's dealing with the rest, probably does it their own way too. But I've done it a number of times where, yeah, I just book a standard room and then contact the hotel directly. It doesn't matter what chain it is or whatever. Just I've done it with choice points booking, preferred hotels.

I've done it with Marriott stays. I've done it with a number of stays. I've done it with a number of different ones. You contact the hotel and say, you know, give them your confirmation number and say, we'd really like a suite. Is it possible to pay extra to get upgraded to a suite? And depending on the property, they may charge the cash difference in rates. But I think a lot of them will look at their inventory and say, hey, we're not going to get anything for the suite. Might as well get an extra 50 bucks a day or 100 bucks a day or whatever it is for moving this person into that suite. Why not?

Yeah. So, okay. Now, you said contact the hotel. How do you do that? How do you contact them? I don't have a ready answer for you. Okay. Well, I just didn't know, do you usually call and talk to somebody at the front desk or how do you get in touch with an individual? When you want to do this, when you've upgraded in the past and presumably had some success with it, how did you get in touch with the hotel? Yeah, for me, it's varied. So sometimes the hotel sends an email from their concierge or whatever and saying about different features,

asking questions about your stay, what you need for your stay. And that's when I will often reply to that and ask for what I want. In other cases, I've just looked up the hotel's direct number and just called them. In other cases, you can try to find the general manager's contact information and contact them. Nick, you've had some experience doing that, right? Yeah, yeah. So there are a couple of things that I wanted to mention here. One of the things that I've done oftentimes is I've just googled the name of the hotel and the words general manager. And so then oftentimes, I'm able to find a LinkedIn

or an article about whoever the general manager is. And then I can usually go back through other emails, email exchanges I've had with people who work at that hotel chain and figure out what the pattern is. Oftentimes, it's something like first name dot last name at Hilton.com, for instance, or that I don't know if that specifically is Hilton or what but but I can usually go back through my email through emails like the one Greg's talking about and figure out what the naming convention is for email addresses and a particular chain. So that's one way and I've often had good success with that. And I've mentioned before that I do that not because I expect the general manager to handle it, but because I expect them to pass it along to an underling of some sort. And when the underling gets something from the general manager

saying, hey, handle this, hopefully they're going to handle it well. So that's one thing that I've done before. Like Greg said, you could potentially just try calling. This is something that's going to be somewhat variable. However, it depends on where you're going. So if you're going to the Maldives, for instance, you can probably Google Flyer Talk and the name of the hotel that you're staying at. And I would bet you that if you go to the dedicated Flyer Talk thread about a particular property, many of the properties in the Maldives have just standard prices that they charge X amount for an overwater bungalow, X amount for this type of thing, X amount for that type of thing. And people will report on Flyer Talk what they've gotten. And they do typically, and I know in the Maldives tend to be pretty standard because you can find

what those costs are. So if it's a place like the Maldives or Bora Bora or whatever, there probably is a relatively standard cost at the specific property that you're looking at. But if it's some other random property in a random place, there's probably not a standard price. Like Greg said, it's probably going to be somewhat up to the whim of whoever it is handles your request. So you might try emailing or calling. The other tip that I wanted to add here is to ask for what it is you want as specifically as you can, because I think that increases your odds of getting what it is that you're looking for. So you know, if you want a one bedroom suite, or you want a suite with a specific view, or whatever the case may be, it helps to ask for that. This is a tip that I've

gotten from Ben's big deal, who I follow on Instagram. And so a few years back, I was in Washington, DC at some sort of miles and points event, and Ben had a gathering in the presidential suite at the Park Hyatt, D.C. And he knew about a specific feature that that suite had that no other suite in the hotel had. And so he asked if they had a suite with that available, knowing ahead of time what he was looking for in that particular property and asking how much to upgrade, blah, blah, blah. So he was able to work that out with the hotel in advance without even directly asking for the presidential suite in that case, just working out an upgrade to a suite, but asking for a specific feature that he knew was going to be found in that suite. And so if you can find information like that about what, you know, it all depends on how much this stuff matters to you and what it is that matters to you versus what doesn't matter.

Maybe you don't need that feature or whatever. So it helps to know what it is you're asking for. But yeah, I think the key thing is there is no standard way to do it. But most properties will give you some sort of an option to upgrade to a different type of room. Sometimes they might do it for free if you just ask nicely. I usually ask for a cost, and I'm pleasantly surprised if they say, oh, we're they might do it for free if you just ask nicely. I usually ask for a cost, and I'm pleasantly surprised if they say, oh, we're able to do that for free kind of a thing. But they might, and you won't know unless you ask what the case is going to be. So you're

just going to have to reach out and find out. But it's worth doing that. Also, final thing that I'm going to add here is that, in my experience, anyway, when the standard room does not accommodate four people, so I have a family of four wife and I and two kids. And oftentimes, I run into situations where a standard room only accommodates two or three people, but a suite would accommodate four. And if I'm able to work out getting into that suite, I've not had a problem putting four people in it. So that's a technique I've used with suite upgrade awards also where, you know, when I've applied one of those, I've been able to have my family of four in a room that accommodates four, even though the standard room only had three. So that's a technique

for people that do have larger families to reach out and see the cost of upgrading to a room that will accommodate the whole family. Yeah, great tip. All right, that wraps us up for this week. If you've enjoyed what we've talked about this week, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. So you can get our emails in your inbox each day or each week. You want to join our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group while you're at it,

where you can discuss stuff like this and ask questions all the time. And if you have a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for a giant mailbag or a question that you'd like to be considered for a question of the week, you can send that to. Send it to mailbag at frequent miler.com. Bye everybody.