Delta SkyMiles: stay away (unless you're going to Australia)

Delta Airlines is one of the largest airlines in the world. They have eight hubs in the U.S. alone, plus two European hubs and an Asian hub. It's huge. They also have arguably the nicest planes and best in-flight experience of any U.S. airline, with first class in almost all of their regional jets, nice leather seats in the whole plane, attentive wait staff in the air, and fleet-wide wifi. They also have the best mobile app of any airline, in my opinion. My family has flown Delta almost exclusively for years, and I think it is simply a wonderful airline. 

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about their SkyMiles program, which I generally detest with a fiery passion. And there are three reasons for this: 

Reason 1: High miles costs per flight

Delta, like the other legacy carriers, has tier levels for the amount of miles it costs to fly a flight. Within the continental U.S., there are three:

• Low - 25,000 miles (roundtrip)
• Medium - 40,000
• High - 60,000

Since U.S. Air, United, and American all have similar tiers, no problem right? Not so fast. The question isn't what their tiers are, it's how many seats are available at each tier. This is where Delta is just ridiculously worse than most of its competitors (except U.S. Air). Take a look at seats on a nonstop route it shares with United:

LAX to San Francisco - 5/17-5/19 weekend

5/17 - Outbound

United

Cheapest Flight: 10,000 miles

Number of flights at that price: 9

Delta

Cheapest Flight: 20,000 miles

Number of flights at that price: 2

5/19 - Return

United

Cheapest Flight: 10,000 miles

Number of flights at that price: 5

Delta

Cheapest Flight: 12,500 miles

Number of flights at that price: 1 (departs at 6:20am)

Winner: United

Savings: 12,500 miles

The basic rule of earning miles is to get as much bang for your buck as you can. If I had to choose between spending 32,500 Delta miles and taking a flight on Sunday at 6am, or spending 20,000 United miles and having my choice of flights, I'm going to choose United any day.

Reason 2: Broken website

If you're searching Delta's website for mileage tickets, you'd expect them to show all of the possible flights you can take, right? Wrong. 

Ask Mr. Credit Card has a great article summarizing all the things wrong with Delta's mileage booking engine, but suffice it to say that the website is awful. Here are some things that happen:

1. You search on their award calendar and it says there is availability at the "Low" level but when you try to find flights there aren't any
2. You search for a specific date and it says there is no "Low" level availability but when you call a phone agent they do see some
3. You can only see some of the other SkyTeam airlines' seats on Delta's site

You should ALWAYS call a phone rep to book a mileage ticket with Delta. They will be able to see what is truly available versus what seems available on the site. Also, do not search flights roundtrip, search each way separately. You are more likely to see what is truly available that way, and then you can call and tell the agent the flights you want.

Reason 3: No one-way tickets

U.S. Airways and Delta are unique in their lack of flexibility on this. With American, United, Southwest, JetBlue, AirTran, and Alaska Airlines you can book one-way tickets with your miles for half the price of a roundtrip ticket. With Delta, they're going to charge you the same amount whether you're flying one-way or roundtrip. SO annoying. 

Positives

Okay it isn't all bad with SkyMiles. I do like them for a couple of reasons:

1. No late-booking fees

While United has a great mileage program, last-minute they charge you $75 to book a ticket. Delta doesn't. This is very helpful for the once in a blue moon you want to fly somewhere last-minute and Delta happens to have award availability on the route you're flying.

2. Australia

Delta partners with Virgin Australia, which flies beautiful planes between LAX and multiple destinations in Australia. You can't book flights on Virgin on the Delta website if you're coming from anywhere other than LAX, but if you call Delta on the phone they should be able to help you do it. Whereas other airlines can charge exorbitant fuel surcharges on their miles tickets to Australia, Delta's low-level award (which is, surprisingly, available frequently on Virgin Australia) costs just 100,000 miles roundtrip plus about $100 in taxes. Not bad! 

There are some other good uses of SkyMiles, nearly all of which involve international travel. The Points Guy has a great post summarizing them.

Wenneker Stamp of Approval?

NO

While I appreciate Delta for being a fantastic airline, and for the one time I was able to find seats that I wanted for my girlfriend to fly to Philadelphia last-minute, overall the SkyMiles program is horrible for domestic travelers. Their miles may be reasonably easy to earn (see link to credit card below), but they are next to impossible to redeem at good rates. If Delta moves to a fare-based mileage program like Southwest and JetBlue, as they have started to do with their elite status earning requirements, that would make the program significantly better for domestic travel. Until then, though, I cannot recommend Delta as the airline to earn your miles with.

Delta Airlines Amex Gold credit card

Details:

No annual fee first year

30,000 bonus miles after $500 spend in 3 months

1 mile per dollar spent