Delta recently announced that they will be switching to “dynamic pricing” for awards. This means they are no longer follow a set of award charts and can and will charge whatever they feel like in terms of miles required to redeem. This is effective immediately for flights booked and flown from June 1, 2016 and beyond. This is sad news for us miles and points lovers.
Since the announcement we have began redeeming our own Skymiles at a fast pace. With the future prices of flights unknown and finding awards tickets costing more than 1 MILLION miles round trip we decided to book early 2016 trips now to lock in good prices and bring our balances down close to zero.
Here is an example of a one way award ticket for 1 passenger in June of 2016. 512,500 in business class ONE WAY!! That is insanity!
We advise you to use up as many of your Delta Skymiles as possible at the current good rates as they have decided that loyalty and rewarding customers for loyalty is no longer needed at Delta. Early in the year (January thru April) is a great time to visit places such as South America, Southeast Asia, and India which are all accessible using Skymiles.
If you have Delta elite status the awards are pricing below the formally published low rates for winter/early 2016 trips to Europe! We have seen as few as 42,000 miles round trip in economy (normally 60,000) to Europe for up to 4 seats. This is unheard of in today’s miles and points world and should be taken advantage of if possible. We have also seen business class as low as 106,000 miles round trip (normally 125,000) which is a great deal as well.
We predict that in the future Skymiles are going to become a lot less valuable and only useful on rare occasions and emergencies. We have stopped collecting Skymiles at Award Booking Service and advise all of you to do the same. Now is the time to consider other programs such as Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan, American Airlines AAdvantage, or others where you can focus your earning where you still receive relative good value for your hard earned points! The only positive point we see with Delta Skymiles is domestic redemptions will likely remain low priced to compete with United and American.
We are available today to help you use up your Skymiles as soon as possible. Submit a request today!