Greetings! My husband and I are planning a trip to New Zealand this Christmas season. I watched the cost of a Delta flight for about 6 months and it never dropped below 3k for a ticket. I finally bit the bullet and bought 2 economy seats for my husband and I. In total we have around 1 million Delta Skymiles saved and want to upgrade to Delta One. I'm shocked that the cost of a DeltaOne flight is nearly $14k or 920K points per ticket. How can this be that a million points won't be enough to upgrade up both? We are both new to points and maybe I'm just living in an alternative reality that doesn't exist. I'm aware we are traveling during the costliest time period. Am I missing something here or is this just the reality that a million points isn't going to get us that much? Thanks for any outside perspective you can give me.

Welcome to FT! Skymiles have the nickname "Skypesos" for a reason. Of the top 3 US carriers, DL has been more generous in rewarding miles vs the other airlines. This has its consequences.

Generally 1 DL mile = $0.012. So a $14k ticket = 1.1M miles. It isn't like the old days where the miles value were based on a table and it cost only 150k miles for a r/t in business to Europe.

Let's be clear. DL has been more generous in rewarding miles vs the other carriers because Delta leads the charge in being a bank and not an airline. They have monetized Skypesos "the best" of all the carriers mostly via their partnership with Amex (the best airline/card tie up in the world I think).

The old guard is gone. The new guard is here. There's no such thing as cheap Skypesos tickets any longer unless it's a sub-500 mile route that nobody flies and Delta wants to dump tickets.

-RM

That has not been my experience.

There aren't really any cheap business class fares on the LAX-AKL route at this point. DL competitors start at around $8.6K roundtrip non-stop and DL's fares are slightly higher starting at $8.8K roundtrip. These fares have a 50 day advance purchase requirement, so you won't see them if you are booking close in. As noted above, DL's mileage redemption value generally fall in a range of 1.2 - 1.3 cents per mile in most cases. If you are looking for better mileage values on business class fares, you should consider switching to one of the other mileage programs as DL does not attempt to compete on mileage values with other airlines. There are 630K roundtrip awards that largely correlate to availability of the $8.8K fares. If you have a Delta Amex card, these are discounted to 535.4K miles roundtrip.

In general I've found better value using SkyMiles for cheap domestic offers and using money for long haul flights.

Thanks everyone. That is helpful to know...disappointing, but oh well. I have another hurdle, even though there are seats available to upgrade to first class, for some reason I am unable to do so online.....it says the seat is unoccupied, but may be occupied before the flight.

I remember when I flew FLL-JFK-ICN-AKL on DL/KE in business for 60k each way � albeit it was a few years ago, but boy, have things changed !
Even back then, I knew I was lucky to have redeemed a biz award for so little �

DL does not provide upgrade offers on all flights that have open seats. Even if they do provide upgrade offers, there's no guarantee the pricing will be all that attractive (they are not fixed amonts based on region/distance). It is not based on the fare difference and at times it can actually be cheaper to pay the fare difference to upgrade rather than select the online seat upgrade offer.

Welcome to FT!

For travel a month out, especially around Christmas, there aren�t many great deals to be had. It used to be where the further out you could book, the better you would be. I would often book trips 250-300 days out (330 is the max). But now I�ve found that greater than 6 months out leads to the highest fares. The 6-3 month range seems to be the sweet spot, with fares generally creeping up again 3 months out. This isn�t a hard and fast rule that applies to every market, but just a general observation.

Miles aren�t the best value anymore, but do have some value still. For example, earlier this year a roundtrip from Anchorage to Paris was $7800. In miles it cost 350,000, so roughly the equivalent of $3500. Definitely a decent redemption compared to the cash price.

At this close in I would keep checking to see if any fare offered, be it economy or delta one appears reasonable to you. If so, you can cancel your existing trip and either rebook with miles as there is no cancellation fee, or rebook using an ecredit if you paid cash. Any residual value would be returned to you in miles if it was an award ticket, or ecredit if it was a cash ticket.

As far as upgrades go, they may or may not be available on each flight. And if they are, no guarantees of a good deal. There�s no set upgrade offer cost. I�ve seen some great ones, and some absurd ones. Best thing is to just check daily and be ready to jump
on it if you see something that works for you.

Hope this helps and let us know if you find something that is a good deal for you!

I remember those days! I used my mileage to buy my daughter first class tickets to Paris ten years ago...80,000 miles round trip. Not anymore.

That was definitely way more than 10 years ago (assuming you are talking about Delta). Biz was already up to 125K roundtrip to EU 10 years ago -- https://runningwithmiles.boardingare...tic-good-deal/
Coach to EU 10 years ago was 60K roundtrip.

A chart from nearly 20 years ago shows coach to EU at 50K roundtrip and biz at 90K --

https://web.archive.org/web/20051214...nada/index.jsp

Perhaps RRR104 was thinking about USAir off peak business class awards?

Anyway Delta now does not have long haul international first class (1st class). Just international business class (~2nd class). Other airlines have the same,
DL should really refer to DeltaOne as DeltaTwo. But some to many get fooled by DL marketing.

Link--> https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/t...-and-delta-one
Another thread by OP (locked)--> SkyMiles and AMEX Travel issue

Enjoy your time in New Zealand. Some places can get very busy Christmas - New Year.

Even Sky Pesos can have some value.... look at the redemption for US/Canada which to me seem to be a decent value. Scan the DL section for others comments.
They never expire -choose your use for your benefit not theirs.

And award costs have gone to obscene levels since covid on most airlines.

Welcome to FT.