The recent announcement of Delta Skymiles changes was greeted as a mostly negative announcement (at least by me). While there are some positive changes, such as the increased ability to upgrade on transcontinental flights, they were outweighed by the announcement that Delta is moving more and more to a “make up whatever award price we want” model (similar to Southwest!)
One thing that did intrigue me however was the announcement of additional flights for 7,500 or 10,000 Skymiles (rather than the standard 12,500 Skymiles for a domestic one-way trip). Included in the full announcement was a link to a promotional page announcing specific city-pairs for 7,500 or 10,000 Skymiles.
Here’s a breakdown of the mentioned flights, along with the flight distance (as a comparison)
10,000 miles:
- Atlanta (ATL) – New Orleans (MSY) – 425 miles
- Atlanta (ATL) – West Palm Beach (PBI) – 546 miles
- Los Angeles (LAX) – Phoenix, AZ (PHX) – 369 miles
- New York (JFK) – Toronto (YYZ) – 366 miles
- New York (JFK) – Bermuda (BDA) – 763 miles
- New York (LGA) – Portland, ME (PWM) – 269 miles
- New York (LGA) – Raleigh / Durham (RDU) – 431 miles
- Minneapolis (MSP) – Chicago (ORD) – 334 miles
7,500 miles
- Cincinnati (CVG) – Ft. Lauderdale (FLL) – 934 miles
- Los Angeles (LAX) – San Jose (SJC) – 308 miles
- Seattle (SEA) – San Francisco (SFO) – 679 miles
You can see that the vast majority of these routes are pretty short, and do not compare well with the 4500 Avios that would be required if this were a oneworld flight.
(SEE ALSO: British Airways – good for domestic US travel too!)
(SEE ALSO: Introduction to Air alliances)
The exceptions would be New York to Bermuda, Seattle to San Francisco and Cincinnati to Fort Lauderdale. In all 3 cases, the corresponding oneworld flight would be 7500 Avios, though American does not fly SEA-SFO (they don’t fly from Cincinnati to Fort Lauderdale either but they DO fly to Miami – that’s the flight I should have taken on my first ever trip paid for with points!)
Finding other cheap Delta Skymiles awards
Delta says that there are other city pairs that cost fewer than 12,500 Skymiles to redeem, but they don’t publish them – you just have to check the website. Trust the website! The Website is never wrong!!!
I plugged in every city that Delta flies to/from Cincinnati, and I could only find one additional one that clocked in at under 12,500 miles – to Baltimore/Washington (BWI), which priced at 10,000 miles
There are other flights out there I know – specifically LAX-SFO was at one point marketed as only 5,000 Skymiles, though it now appears to cost 7,500. I did also check the cash price for the CVG-BWI flight, and the instead of 10,000 Skymiles you could pay $146.10, so you’re geting 1.4 cents per mile from your mile, which is definitely not the best you could do.
For me, this just means that you have to continue to “work” harder and harder to get true value from your Skymiles, and it’s why I will continue to focus my energies elsewhere
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Sadly, CVG still sucks. I need to go to NYC in March and May of next year. CVG – NYC only shows 30K point options for either month. However, they are clearly low level because I can get them on Alaska for 25K points. Lame. DAY, CMH, IND all have direct flights to NYC for 25K. CVG 30K….hate hate hate.
CVG – FLL is direct competition for Frontier, right? I understand that at least, CVG – BWI competes against what, DAY – BWI on Southwest? OK, whatever.
Yeah – CVG is not a great airport for travel hacking…. 🙁
I think CVG-FLL competes with Allegiant – thanks for reminding me of that – I meant to include that in the post. I see CVG-FLL flights for $69 one way on Allegiant
A few weeks ago I booked MCO-DTW one-way for 7500 miles for travel early on a Monday morning in August. The flights later in the day were at a higher mileage level. So I don’t mind getting up super early to save some miles!
I think that this is the way that Delta is moving – more in-demand flights are going to cost more. I agree with you though – no problem waking up early
So our prices usually lower early in the morning- and if so, is that calibrated to the West coast or East coast?
Prices are (generally) lower for the flights that less people want to take. That often is the first flight of the day and the last (but not always!)
Meh, why spend 15K Skymiles roundtrip to travel to Florida from CVG? Delta will likely only make that award level available on dates when Frontier and Allegiant have cheap fares. It’s not terribly hard to score sub-$150 and even sub-$100 r/t fares to FLL, MCO, or RSW on the LCCs if you set Hipmunk alerts and pay attention to the weekly fare sales. I’m actually surprised that Delta hasn’t killed the non-stops to Florida from CVG. Even though Skymiles have depreciated several times, I still think that I could get more than $0.01 per mile redemption value.
Exactly – I think Allegiant currently has $69 one-way fares from CVG-FLL
There are quite a few flights for 7500 out of San Francisco. I’ve seen Seattle, Salt Lake City, and Los Angeles for that amount. I just booked Salt Lake City to go see some National Parks and pretty much all of 2015 starting August 15th onward except for around Thanksgiving and Christimas is 7500 on every day.