Originally Posted by
Jaimito Cartero
17k in DL miles isn’t worth much. I value DL at 1 cent per mile.
DL says if you die, the miles expire. With that small amount of miles you might find a cheap one way trip, or short haul round trip. Use the miles, and don’t tell DL.
I guess it depends on your origin and destination, but RT flights to the west coast are 9-12k depending on where you're going (sea,lax,Las all pretty cheap) as long as they're 21+ days out.
I'd bet delta subscribes to the database that alerts them of deaths though, so you may not be able to book something that far out since you're booking it after the date of death.