I always try to use points. I try not to waste points and over pay for things vs. what I personally value my points at but still the standing rule is spend them whenever I can.

Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) is one of the most simple and flexible points programs to use. Sure you can send them to many programs 1 for 1 but for me I love to spend them for travel “stuff” and get 1.25 cents per point value towards say a car rental or a resort. You can just pick all points or part cash & part points or all cash to earn more points (since starting at the Chase portal). Just do what you value the most!

Having redeemed well over ½ million UR points I have learned a bunch. I have learned when it comes to cars, you will not lose your Visa Signature protection when redeeming points or points and cash for your car and blogged about it HERE.

With airline tickets, it is simple. Once you are ticketed, UR is, for the most part, out of the loop. You have with say Delta, just purchased the ticket and you deal with Delta for say a flight change or a plethora of other travel issues.

With hotels or resorts, it is another matter and you need to understand how this all works. Chase uses a travel agency to do all the bookings. It is, btw, the same one that Citi Thank You also uses.

Anyway, as a simple example let’s look at my trip to Grand Cayman at the Reef Resort. To get the 1.25 cents per point value you have to pick a resort that partners with Chase. Then, the Travel Agency (TA) books this for you. Many times it will NOT be direct. For me, the Chase travel agency used “Fun Jet” to do the booking with The Reef. You see the steps and the connections going on here. I had: Chase→UR Travel Agency→Fun Jet→The Reef. WOW! So, what if something goes wrong? You don’t call Chase, you call the UR TA. They are your go to point. But, this is not always simple. Say you have an issue with the resort, they have to answer not to you or to UR TA but to Fun Jet. Fun Jet does not deal with you, they deal with the UR TA. Now I am not saying any of this is “bad”, and when I had a major issue with this year’s booking, it all worked out very well and everyone worked hard to make it right and they did. But it did take time, stress and many many MANY e-mails to get it all worked out and I got some credit back to my card and a check for the difference as they could not put the points back into my account.

Are the extra steps worth it? You bet. I mean think about this, the INK BOLD card or the INK PLUS card both, once you meet the $5000 in spend (thus 55,000 points), will give you  $687  in travel value when redeemed at the 1.25 cents per point through the UR portal. If a husband and wife each got both cards in one year, after spend requirements on each card, you are talking  $2,750 credit towards your vacation! You could even each also add a Chase Sapphire, after $3000 spend pick up another 43,000 total points, and have another  $1075  added to your totals! For me, to not have to come up with that much cash for a vacation is truly amazing and a great travel value (many will say you should ONLY redeem for premium cabins etc – if that’s what you want, fine – for others like me I like this way)!

As a Delta flyer, I will use my Delta Skymiles and fly business class, use my UR points to rent cars and pay for resorts and the result is amazing vacations year after year. How about you? – René

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

Do you know what has changed since I was interviewed by Million Mile Secrets and told readers to “Start earning everywhere you can”? Absolutely nothing. One of the keys to this crazy points earning “game” we play is paying attention to the details. If there is one and ONLY ONE most important feature you must learn to succeed in this, it is that you must be detail-oriented. For example, if you are not detail-oriented you may miss paying a credit card IN FULL each and every month forever and pay a stupid amount of interest to the banks. Even just one month of this and you are loosing big time, so be detail-oriented.

The same thing applies to points. Look at THIS post about dining rewards that just take the time to add your credit card then you can get extra points when dining out (plus they have a 1500 point Skymiles bonus for new accounts). E-Rewards no longer offers Skymiles as a redemption option, but there is a VERY nice way to earn Skymiles and more as you can see HERE as I blogged about in another rookie post. There are also Thanks Again that once you enter your card you can earn Delta Skymiles at a bunch of places. Lastly we can always check the Delta.com page that has all the current partner bonus deals going on.

But now to today’s topic E-Miles. Until the first of the year we could earn Skymiles. But, like E-Rewards, that came to an end. During the transition time they really had a very poor grouping of redemption options. That has now changed as you can see from the screen grab at the top of this post! If you are reading this post not on May 15th, 2013, you may want to search for the most current new member bonus deals. As of today, you can get:

• 275 E-Miles from the Hhonors link HERE

• 275 E-Miles from the US Air link HERE

• 100 United miles from this link HERE

• ZERO bonus but you can PICK your reward program HERE

So pick the link that will give you the best perk. Then, once you reach 500 E-Miles you can pick any of the rewards you like the best (you are not bound to the program you join from). EDIT: It seems you ARE still bound by the start program, at least if you are an old user, so you may want to start and PICK the one you want from the list with ZERO bonus points. So, old Delta users get much more choice than others!

I chose to redeem mine for 750 Priority Club points. I try to always use my PC points for the point breaks nights at 5000 each so this redemption has some nice value toward a free night for me. But there are some “gotcha’s” you need to watch out for.

As soon as you earn an E-Mile the clock starts ticking for it’s expiration. You ONLY have one year after earning your mile to use it so BE CAREFUL if you let your miles sit too long!

Details details details. I can not say this enough times rookies. There are so many points out there and all the little ones can add up and can mean not just getting 1x points for a dollar spent but maybe 2x or 5x or 10x! Have any other neat little ways of earning points? Please share them with your 4000+ daily E-Mail and RSS Delta Points readers on the blog below (and include the link to the program you are talking about please)! – René

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

I had a very detailed rookie post about what will have the biggest impact on if you ultimately will score a Delta upgrade or not. Unfortunately I missed a major minor component in that post and will update it after this goes live. What is that item?

THE TIME YOU
✈  CHECK-IN  ✈
for your flight!

This, confirmed on Delta.com with your “time of request“, is the final tie break that can mean the difference between you getting the upgrade and someone else sitting in your seat! You can check-in for an itinerary up to 24hrs before the first flight and thus, depending on how many legs you have and the time between them, you may end up well ahead of the rest of the pack on a trip.

I always try to check-in ASAP on Delta.com and try not to wait for the e-mail from Delta reminding me that it is time to do so. Next, I print my boarding pass to a PDF to get my digital HOOU coupon sent to my phone and then also confirm the check-in on my phone so I have my digital boarding pass as well. I really have no idea if “re-checking-in” will reset your upgrade clock so from now on I will leave that alone to be safe! – René

EDIT: If you look at the comments in this post many have either gate agents as friends etc. and have challenged the accuracy of this post. I have again today confirmed that “time of check-in”  IS  a component of upgrades. I chose poorly in using the word MAJOR factor as this truly is a MINOR factor (I updated the title of the post also to reflect this). The ONLY time this would have an impact is, when all things being EXACTLY equal (and from the last post you know it is a LONG list), then the time of check-in will be yet another factor as to who gets the upgrade.

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

Back in the day you could hop over to Canada or Mexico from the US with nothing more than a driver’s license or birth certificate. Life was simple then. With the passing of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), effective June 1, 2009 US citizens are required to have WHTI compliant documents, most commonly a U.S. passport, a passport card, a trusted traveler card such as NEXUS, SENTRI or FAST, or an enhanced driver’s license, to enter the US by land or sea ports. This led to an overwhelming number of applications for first time passports, as you may recall, and lengthy delays in the application process due to the backlog of applications that piled up.

As many of you know, I have had a passport since I was an infant due to the international nature of my parentage. My wife had never had a passport prior to our planning for our first trip to Sweden. While it’s a fairly common thing for those of us who enjoy extensive travel, it might be a fairly large first hurdle for those rookies among us who may be applying for their first ever passport and are completely unfamiliar with the process. There may also be a few things you weren’t aware of as a frequent traveler that you might want to take advantage of in the future.

Applications for new passports as well as renewals can be filled out online through the official government website.

All of the required documents are explained and once you have all the documents required you can take everything to your local post office to submit your application. You can check to see if your post office can accept your passport application here.

A passport renewal application is a little easier. You can fill out this application online as well, obtain current photos and submit the required documents all yourself by mail. With a renewal that meets the qualifications there is no need to submit the application through the post office, and it will just cost you an additional fee to do so.

What if your problem is that you have a few more years on your passport, but you have run out of Visa pages available for further travel? You can fill out an application online to add pages to your passport with Form DS-4085. This will give you the option of adding either 24 or 48 pages for the same fee, currently $82. If you are renewing your passport and you anticipate that you will require more than the standard 28 pages due to frequent travel abroad, you can simply check the box to have your new passport issued with 52 pages instead, for no additional fee! You may also want to consider whether it is worth it to renew your passport early with the additional pages instead of paying the fee to add pages for only the few years you have left on your passport since the renewal fee is currently $110, only $28 more than the fee to add pages. If you are renewing more than 90 days prior to expiration you simply need to include a note with your application to explain the early renewal request.

What if you have a passport that is still valid for several more years, but your name has changed? I encountered this problem when departing from Sweden once many years ago when the gate agent initially refused to allow Lisa to board since her name was different on the boarding pass (married name) from the front of her passport (maiden name). Fortunately we had mailed it in with our marriage license for the name change and had only to instruct the gate agent to look at the back page and then all was well. There is no fee for this service unless you require expedited service, and the requirements for documentation of change of name are listed here.

For me, domestically, I always use my GOES “ID” card when I fly. It is simple and then my drivers license stays where it “lives” in my wallet. From now on, whenever I fly Internationally, my passport is going to be a bit fatter with extra pages as with points coming in fast I see many more countries on my radar – René

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

First of all, you might want to know why you would want to go through what I am about to show you! With an American Express Bluebird account funded with Vanilla Reload cards, you can pay bills with funds charged to a credit card that you would otherwise either write a check for or have to pay a fee in order to pay with a credit card. Confused? Don’t be. This is a way to meet your minimum spend when you are churning credit cards. First let me walk you through the steps.

Signing up for a Bluebird account is where to begin, and it’s pretty simple and is free and there is no credit pull for the card. Once you complete all of the information for an account they will send you a card with your account number on it. It takes about 14 days for the card to arrive in the mail. Please be sure to remember your logon name and password you created.

When you receive the card in the mail you have to go back to the website to activate the account with information from the actual card. Now your account is ready for use, but you have to fund it to have a balance to pay bills from. This is where the credit card spend comes in because you can fund your Bluebird account with Vanilla Reload cards which you can purchase with a points credit card of your choice.

To fund your Bluebird account with a Vanilla Reload card that you get from say your local CVS store, that you purchased using your point credit card (2x$500 per transaction max allowed) and looks like the photo above, you have to go to the Vanilla Reload site, and the address is also on the card. There you enter your Bluebird card number (be very careful to enter the right number) and then the pin code from the back of the Vanilla reload card you have purchased, and your funds are now transferred to your Bluebird account. You can verify the transfer by logging in to your Bluebird account and checking the balance. You can load a max of $1000 per day to your Bluebird account this way.

If you do not have a reliable source for this little gems, please take the time to review our fellow BoardingArea.com blogger Greg, The Frequent Milers post HERE about buying gift cards with PIN option to use them to load your Bluebird at a Walmart.

Now you’re ready to use your Bluebird account to pay bills and you have a couple of options on how you can do that. You can use the bill payment feature to send electronic payments to registered payees, or if your payee is not registered then a check will be mailed and it will just take a few more days for the payment to get to your payee. The date the payment will arrive is shown so you can see just how long each payment will take to arrive.

You can also order checks from Bluebird, right now they’ll send you the first 100 checks for free if you order by May 21, 2013  (click on the “My Account” and order checks is the last menu item).

These checks work a little differently than the checks you get with a regular checking account. These checks must be pre-authorized before you can actually use them, but it’s a really simple process. Once you receive your checks, you just log on to your Bluebird account and click on “Pre-Authorize a Check”

On the next screen you fill in the check number and amount. The next screen will give you a pre-authorization code, which you write on the check in the space provided for it. Then you just fill out the rest of the check normally and sign it and send it to whoever you are paying with it. The funds are withdrawn from your balance immediately when you pre-authorize the check, and then your account is updated when the check is paid.

There are some limitations with a Bluebird account you should know about as you jump in! You are only allowed to pay out a maximum of $5000 out of your Bluebird account each month to unregistered payees. The entire list of fees and limits is available on the site under FAQs.

This really is a great way to say pay your mortgage, car loan, insurance or whatever bill does not take a credit card. It makes spending the large amount to get say your $30,000 spend done on your Delta AMEX Reserve card a whole lot simpler and faster! – Lisa

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

This week, with a HT to reader “Sean”, is all about the best way to book a ticket to fly on Delta Air Lines. This also comes with a word of caution. What caution? Delta wants you to [start] booking everything on Delta.com, and even offers a “best rate guarantee” yes the “best price on the web” and this will also ensure you get full credit for your flight. You see, other sites, could, maybe, dump you into the “consolidator” fare group that does not give full credit for booking from them.

Now all these types are NOT created equal. Take  ITA Software  or  Kayak  for example. Both of these simply “scrape” data from Delta.com and display them to you. ITA will not let you then transfer to Delta.com, you must do that yourself. But, Kayak.com, does let you dump over to Delta.

You may be saying to yourself, all of this is interesting but who really cares. Delta.com makes it very simple to book a ticket on their website. All I do is plug in the dates, if I want coach or business or even if I want a specific fare class (i.e. at least this high or higher please).

Here is why I beg you, for now, to never ever do this ever again. Please. Because if you do this, you could be paying the exact same price to fly in coach as you could have to fly in first or business class! Seriously! Or, even worse, you may pay MORE to fly in coach when you could have flown in first (at least part of the trip). Let’s look at a real world example. Last weekend you wanted to fly from Washington to Florida. So you jump on Delta.com to search:

Delta.com does it’s thing and starts to look for the “best fare” under the conditions you have picked.

And what did Delta.com find you for you after this very simple search for the cheapest economy fare seat for your trip?

OK, well, I did this search last week, and only a few days before the flights, so I guess we can all understand that the cost to buy the ticket should be high. Right? Well what if we jump on Kayak.com and search for seats. What will it show?

Well. This is a much lower rate. And not just by a little bit. I have a bunch of choices and if I pick them they will send me over to Delta.com and just fill in the flights Kayak.com has picked for me. Let’s see what happens next:

I hope you have seen what has just happened as it is the entire point of today’s post and why, for now, you should NEVER EVER start your booking at Delta.com. As you can clearly see, not only is the price much lower, but I am flying coach on the outbound part of the trip, and first class on the return part of the trip. In fact, the flights may not even show up on the Delta.com search at all since the only seats open on the flight are in first, and you have asked Delta.com not to search for first class. Note if you try to work around this, by selecting a minimum fare class, Delta.com may give you the choice of coach or business, but not always.

You see Delta.com does not allow you to mix and match your search in this way, that is coach one way and first the other way. Nor will Delta.com try to find the best “deal” for you that is the best price and the best cabin for the best price. The search engine is not yet designed that way and who knows how long, if ever, it will change to do what Kayak and ITA does automatically.

I hope today’s post has been an eye opening post for you. Many readers commonly use other booking sites to get bonus points by starting at these sites and I encourage you to test these out as well. At this point, any site, other than Delta.com, is the one to start your booking with (with caution) and lastly, if you want 3x points for each ticket you do buy, then you should be paying for them with your AMEX GOLD Premier Membership Rewards card or the Business GOLD Membership Rewards Card 50,000 point card! – René
 

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

I have had a few complaints that my “rookie” topics have been a bit too non-rookie as of late. A fair complaint, but you would be surprised how many Diamond Medallions thank me for some little tip they did not know that they read about on rookie Wednesday (well then again I guess that does make their point ).

So today, back to basics on upgrades. After all, to move up to that cushy, wide, first class seat is what it is all about right? To get the free drinks, better free snacks or food. Or even a full-flat seat to sleep well on a long flight. Ah, that is the life and why we spend so much of our time chasing points and miles!

Just what does it take to score an upgrade? There are many factors that go into it. The first step, that you can read more about HERE, is getting status. Now MUST you have status to get an upgrade? No, but I will touch more on that in a bit.

Complementary upgrades from coach to first class, domestically and some other markets, are extended to all medallions on most tickets. There are exceptions I will cover as well. But in general, if you are even the lowest of all medallion, Silver Medallion, you have a small shot at the upgraded seat.

I did a detailed post HERE on just what makes the biggest difference to get the upgrade so reviewing that post at this point may be a good idea before we go on.

What are the few things that will prevent you from an upgrade? First, internationally Delta does not offer free upgrades to anyone; this applies even to the very top Diamond Medallion flyers. There are exceptions, like when a flight is oversold, then you could move up but this is the exception not the rule so don’t expect it. An “OP-UP” as it is called, or an operational upgrade, is a gift and you say thank you and move on. Other things that can prevent you from an upgrade. Skymiles free tickets can score an upgrade, but you must be at least Gold Medallion to qualify for this or the second level up the medallion chain; Silver Medallions had better book first with Skymiles if they want to fly in first. Also the AMEX buy-one-get-one-free certs that come along with both the Platinum Delta AMEX and the Reserve Delta AMEX (in year two), these, when booked in coach, are NOT ever upgrade eligible. The Reserve card cert does let you pick either coach or first as your reward so keep that in mind.

So what other ways are there to upgrade? One is spend extra miles, but not ALL tickets qualify. Here is where the confusing “alphabet soup” of fare class codes comes into play. You can read in detail an outstanding breakdown of each fare class code and rule HERE at CWSI.net’s page all about Delta fare codes. But in a nutshell, K class or higher for Domestic is needed to spend points to get the big seat if it is available for upgrade with points. Internationally you need to be M class or higher. There are also for Platinum & Diamond Medallions something called a SWU or System Wide Upgrade. As a rookie you will not have access to these and PM & DM know how to use them (not impossible domestically but very hard and costly internationally)!

That just about sums it up. Status, points, certs. That is about it. Other than one more you may see now and then. If there are NO medallions left who qualify with all the above, AND, you have a K+ class fare, you may notice Delta offer an upgrade for a fee at the gate. This would be one reason to purchase a fare class higher than the deeply discounted normal coach class of “LUTXVE”. However, this is vary rare to see and you should not, IMO, just spend for the higher fare class with hopes of seeing this happen.

Any other questions about upgrades? Please, if you are reading this via e-mail, go to the blog and look down to the bottom of the post where it says “comments”, click that, then go to the bottom box and fill in your question. Please do this rather than e-mail me so others can also learn from your question! Thanks – René
 

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

One question I get a bunch is can I send from this or that program over to Delta. The answer is often yes, but it is just as often not worth it. Why? You lose so much in value that it negates the advantage of topping off your Delta account that way.

You can use this outstanding site http://www.webflyer.com/ to follow the path of how to get points from wherever to Delta if it is even possible. The mileage converter will make it very clear what is possible. It is then up to you to decide if it is worth it for such things as Hotel points and the like.

So those are for the “hard” ones. What about the simple ones? Most of us should know that we can at any time, if we want to, hold both a personal and a business Delta AMEX card and can have both of those cards earn US  Skymiles all to OUR Skymiles account. We can add users to our personal or business Delta AMEX cards and then what they spend (we have to pay the bill for what they spend) will count for our earning Skymiles.

But what else? Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) card, both the  personal card and the  business card, and you can hold both at once, can all be sent to the same SPG account in your name. You can, like with the Delta AMEX card, add users, and the spend on those cards will go your SPG account. SPG has a very nice perk, while it does take a few weeks to send SPG points to Delta, when you send 20,000 points in one transaction, you will receive at Delta.com 25,000 total. That is, they will give you an extra 5,000 Skymiles for the transaction. So, for example, if you sent over 4 batches of 20,000 points (or one 80,000 if you wish), you would at Delta receive 100,000, that is enough for a low level business class seat to Europe.

Another way is Membership Rewards points. These can be sent over at a 1:1 ratio, that is, each MR point you send will net you one Delta Skymile. There have been very nice promotions in the past where you could earn 25%, 50% or even 100% bonus Skymiles when you did these types of transfers and even sometimes bonus Medallion Qualifying points on top of that. The points will transfer almost instantly so that is a big perk of this program.

I hope you see the pattern here. If you want MAX value, you will have to stay in the AMEX family. Now, do keep in mind, you can SPEND many other types of points and FLY on Delta and earn Delta Skymiles that way. From the outstanding 40,000 point Barclaycard Arrival card to the Chase Ultimate Rewards points to US Bank FlexPerks just to name a few. But you cannot TRANSFER these points over to Delta directly like with the ones talked about above.

Skybonus is also a nice perk/program but those points CANNOT be sent to Delta Skymiles either. They can be redeemed for Delta travel perks such as free trips or upgrades and such, but Skybonus is a separate program itself, so do keep that in mind.

Either way, if you ever are confused about what points you can send to Delta, bookmark this post as a guide to remind you if you have a churn on the way for April or whenever and want to make sure your choice can get you as many Skymiles as you need for that next big trip! – René
 

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

How is that for an attention grabber? There is a reason for the title. Delta Air Lines does offer much to get a frequent flyer from another airline to come over to the Delta side. Our points never expire (as long as you are alive, that is). We offer unlimited domestic as well as Caribbean and more upgrades! All our mainline jets have WiFi and soon will add international high speed as well. Our business class product both domestic and international is among the best in industry. Our Skyclubs are very nice and offer reliable free WiFi. Our @DeltaAssist on twitter offers very good service and our elite line reps are, most of the time, very good and helpful!

So there are the perks. You should know, however, there are times of the year when it is most advantageous to do this.

I encourage you to check HERE as you will be able to read on Delta.com about the most UP TO DATE info about the match. But for many years these are the basic rookie bits you want to know about.

If you match, after July 1st any year, you then can keep your status much longer than if you put in the request BEFORE July 1st. For example, this year (the data is not yet up to date but should be the same), if you go for it say on July 1st and meet the requirements inside 90 days, you will have your status until FEB2015!

As you can see from the page, there are a bunch of requirements and we call our elite qualifying points Medallion Qualifying Miles (MQMS’s) not Elite Qualifying Miles (EQM’s). So here are the big points to keep in mind:

1. MUST complete inside 90 days
2. MUST still fly MQM’s to keep past 2015
3. No Choice benefits until full MQM’s earned

Let’s look at these one by one. The 90 days to get this done is a HARD and fast rule. The points do NOT need to post before the 90 days are up, but you must have taken and completed the flight inside the window. Be sure to check at Delta.com to see that your upgraded status is correctly displayed as you should see your temporary new matched status on your “My Delta” page.

The next part is you must fly. There are many other ways to get MQM’s. You can get 10,000 MQM’s from either the Personal or Business Delta AMEX Reserve card but “officially” these points DO NOT COUNT toward your match / challenge! By all means use these tools to build your balance each year, but NOT for challenge. Clear? If not, ask below in the comments section.

Now on to Choice Benefits. Once you make either Platinum or even up to Diamond Medallion Status Delta will give you some nice perks. You can do things like gift status to those you love or get some credits toward future flights or SWU’s (note these are hard to use on Delta). However, say you match Platinum, you will NOT be eligible for this perk just because you completed the challenge. You will have to EARN 75,000 MQM’s this year to get the benefit, but in this case ALL the ways of earning MQM’s will count like from AMEX cards or even buying MQM’s direct from Delta!

Other information you need to know about. If you want to remain say Medallion past FEB2015, the 2014 travel year will bring some big changes. Delta has added MQD’s or Medallion Qualifying dollars to the mix.

So, to earn your status for the 2015 year ending in FEB2016, you will not ONLY have to fly but also spend. The spend is ONLY the part of the ticket that is money that goes to Delta, not any other fees, add-ons or taxes. The simple way around this is to get ANY of the Delta AMEX cards and spend $25,000 on them in 2014.

The last important info I hope you did not miss. You only have 1 shot in your life to do this. Only request this match if you are ready to join the best airline in the world! Delta! – René

▲Delta▲ SkyMiles® Credit Card
RESERVE/PLATINUM/GOLD
from American Express®
Click here for more information

Delta has had a real revenue based earnings program for a long time call SkyBonus. It ONLY awards you for the cost of the ticket. No tax, only the real cash that goes to Delta (you do still get credit for flying Skyteam “code share” members). The kool part about this program is that, now with SPG  CrossoverRewards, it is possible to earn “3x” points on all Delta tickets.

Delta also gives bonus points when you register for certain deals and fly from hubs and such but basically it is a program to reward business flyers with even more points and perks.

So who can join this program? The directions say:

Skybonus® is a complimentary business travel rewards program designed specifically for small to mid-sized companies. Skybonus turns your business travel budget into rewards by converting the dollars your company spends for travel on Delta, Air France, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Alitalia, or any of our codeshare partners into Skybonus points.

So just what is a small to mid-sized company? And, can say a sole proprietor join this program? Delta tells us:

Delta reserves the right to determine the eligibility of the Company.

So Delta will decide if you are good enough. But, I did reach out to Delta and was told that YES a sole proprietor can absolutely join. I think most Delta Points reader who run a business could join. But there are more bits you need to know.

While you can get a business credit card and spend and earn just about any amount or even run your company at a loss, this is not the case with Skybonus. Delta wants you to spend money on Delta to be able to remain in the program. Notice one of the important T&C listed:

Participating companies that do not have Delta flown revenue greater than $5,000 USD or the equivalent in other currencies per calendar year may be de-enrolled from the Program.

Does that mean you will be kicked out automatically if you say spend $3000 or $4000 one year? Probably not, but you will be on notice I bet. Delta wants those who spend money on Delta tickets and to reward them with more perks. What kind of perks? Most of the Skybonus site you cannot access unless you are a member. You can peak at the full list at THIS PDF of the rewards.

As you can see, the rewards take a bunch of points and the fact that you earn them at a much lower rate than Skymiles means that it will take a while. There have been HUGE new user bonus point deals in the past so I would wait for a new one to come along before you join unless you have a bunch of employees flying all over and waiting will cost you.

Also, there are ways to clean up on this but with some warnings. All your employees, when they fly Delta, can earn YOU Skybonus points by adding your SkyBonus number to their Skymiles account (go to “My Delta” then click “View My Profile” then lastly “Flight Preferences”).

But, say you are a sole proprietor, adding your mom and dad and brother is a really dumb idea as you are a sole proprietor. Now, say you run an LLC or a small business and employ your dad and mom and brother, then YES do add them and enjoy the points when they fly for you!

So that is the basics in a Rookie fashion. You need to take advantage of this program if you can as it is just silly to leave points on the table Delta will give you for free – René
 

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