Now that some SkyMiles rewards have increased in price, Delta's motto "keep ascending" may apply.
According to Thrifty Traveler, Delta Air Lines appears to have abruptly raised the cost of its SkyTeam partner awards to match its own flights.
Despite the possibility of a technical glitch or other transient issue, this comes after the airline decided to eliminate partner sweet spots earlier this year and raise award costs for partners in 2021.
And Delta has positioned itself so that it is not bound by any established price model because there is no public award chart.
Flights on well-known Delta partners including Air France/KLM, Korean Air, and Virgin Atlantic are included in this.
As a result, partner rewards that previously required 120,000 Delta SkyMiles to book in business class can now cost as much as 330,000 miles.
Previously only 35,000 miles away, coach tickets to Europe now cost 65,000 miles each way.
If this pricing persists, it would result in a quite significant depreciation.
After contacting Delta for a response, we didn't get one by the time of publishing.
What you need to know regarding the impending devaluation of Delta SkyMiles is provided below.
Delta's own flights are priced the same as SkyTeam awards.
Since Delta has been using a dynamic pricing mechanism on its flights for a while, the award rates change just like the cash prices do.
The fact that SkyTeam reward prices were more consistent and resembled the airline's since-retired award charts was a plus.
However, at the moment, SkyTeam partners' ticket prices are fairly comparable to those of Delta's own-operated flights.
Let's examine a flight that KLM operates from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport (ORD) to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (AMS).
Prior to this apparent devaluation, an economy ticket on this flight would have likely cost 35,000 SkyMiles.
However, the price of the flight has increased to 56,000 SkyMiles.
By coincidence, that is the same cost as the cheapest Delta flight with a stopover at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP).
The same applies to Virgin Atlantic flights, which will soon join SkyTeam.
At the same price as Delta's own route, Virgin Atlantic offers service between Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) and London Heathrow Airport (LHR).
Look at the well-known route from New York to London.
Both Delta and Virgin Atlantic-operated flights have a lot of shockingly high prices.
All of these flights operated by partners are now priced the same as flights operated by Delta.
Without Delta service in SkyTeam cities
Notably, the award rates we looked at don't change for trips that are only provided by a partner airline and don't include Delta service.
For instance, because Delta doesn't travel to Taipei's Taoyuan International Airport (TPE), the reward rates for China Airlines flights departing from the United States stay the same as they have in the past.
In conclusion
In our test searches, Delta Air Lines charges the same less-than-ideal award prices for SkyTeam partner-operated flights as it does for its own.
On the plus side, there's a chance that partner award fees will decrease when Delta runs SkyMiles sales, although that is still just conjecture at this point.
We contacted Delta for a response.
For the time being, it appears that SkyMiles are less valuable than they formerly were for individuals who enjoy using them to book flights on partner airlines.
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