Delta Airlines Makes Skymiles redemption more Flexible

If you’re a Delta Air Lines SkyMiles® member in search of more redemption flexibility, your moment may have come. The nation’s third-largest airline is not reworking SkyMiles radically, but it is building in some much-needed flexibility that could help stretch your miles.

When booking a travel award, you can now combine Coach, First Class/BusinessElite®, SkySaver and SkyChoice travel on one ticket and save thousands of miles in the process. No longer are you locked into one option on both the outbound and return legs of your journey.

Case-in-point: travel Atlanta (ATL) to London Gatwick (LGW) in a SkyChoice BusinessElite seat, and return in a SkySaver Coach seat. Redemption? 150,000 miles under the new formula, as opposed to 250,000 miles under the old one.

Another example, this one closer to home. Fly New York Kennedy (JFK) to Los Angeles in a SkySaver First Class seat, and return via SkySaver Coach for 35,000 miles. That leg used to run 45,000 miles.

Later this year, look for Delta Air Lines to:

- Offer an online availability calendar at www.delta.com. This will allow you to shop around for award seats;

- Automatically contact Medallion elite members when an upgrade has cleared. If you’re a Medallion member waiting for an upgrade to materialize, Delta Air Lines will automatically add you to the standby list at the airport upon check-in.

SkyMiles is potent. Delta contends that the program led the airline industry with 3.3 million award tickets in 2005.

Written by admin on January 19th, 2007 with no comments.
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