Originally Posted by
jonsailor
I see Delta advertises that in the second year of the $650 annual Delta Reserve Card, one gets a free companion ticket for any class of travel for RT domestic or Caribbean or Central American travel. Can this companion ticket certificate be used any time such flights are available or are there restrictions? Thanks.
Valid for any simple round-trip in the relevant destinations as long as it is available in I class or lower. This is the lower half of Delta fares and D class (the next highest) tends to be quite expensive, so I would say the certificate is extremely easy to use except for the fact you have to deal with Delta IT which can be a mess sometimes. Nonetheless, there seem to be numerous posters who (I guess) only fly in D/H or higher and disagree, finding the inventory difficult to locate.
The only other caveat is that it is not valid for Delta One marketed flights, which will severely restrict your options to Hawaii. Also, the certificate is nonrefundable, so you can't speculatively book and cancel for credit.
In general, I find the certificate to pay for the card even before it was expanded beyond CONUS, usually paying for an $800 to $1,000 ticket I was buying anyway.