Until September 30, 2011, Delta Airlines is offering a 100% bonus when you transfer/buy miles. Usually buying or transferring frequent flier miles is never a good idea because airlines charge way more than the miles are worth and there are fees for transfering miles. This bonus offer brings down the cost of transferring/buying miles by half which makes this a pretty good deal for getting really cheap flights on Delta.
Delta Charges $0.035 per mile plus a 7.5% excise tax plus a $30.00 transaction fee to purchase miles. So if you wanted to buy enough mileage for two base round trip (25,000 miles each) tickets on Delta. It would cost $875 to purchase the miles plus $65.63 in taxes plus $30 transaction fee for a total of $940.63. This can get you two round trip domestic flights so that is a cost of about $485 each. Without the bonus one round trip ticket would cost the full $940.63 (not a good deal!). So $485 for a domestic round trip ticket seems like an OK deal, but it is nothing to get too excited about.
Here is where it gets really exciting.....
Delta charges $0.01 per mile plus a $30 transaction fee to transfer miles to another Skymiles account holder. Normally, this is a bad idea because it would cost you $280 to transfer 25,000 miles to someone else so that they can book a ticket.
Let's look at this same situation with the 100% bonus for transferring miles offered by Delta Airlines. Let’s say you already have 25,000 Skymiles in your account. If you don't you can get 25,000 Delta Skymiles for free just for signing up for the Delta Skymiles American Express Card. Find someone else with a Skymiles account or have them sign up for one. The terms and conditions say that in order to get the bonus, you must have had your Skymiles account for at least 10 days.
With the 100% bonus for transferring miles, you will pay $280 for 25,000 Skymiles enough for one domestic round trip flight. From reading the terms and conditions, there is no reason why you could not transfer miles to one person’s account, get the 100% bonus, then transfer the miles back to the other account and get the 100% bonus again.
It’s a good idea to know where you want to fly and check out the amount of miles needed and the price for a full fair ticket.
I looked at traveling round trip from Seattle, WA to JFK in New York. The cost of a full price ticket was $370. Using 25,000 miles instead will save you $90 or about 24%.
The savings can vary greatly. I often fly out of Alaska. A round trip flight from Anchorage, AK to Seattle, WA cost $668. This flight was also 25,000 air miles. This represents a savings of $388. The lowest price on any of the competitor airlines was $548. This is still almost a 50% savings over the full cost fare.
Save yourself some money on air travel and check of this deal. Remember the offer expires September 30, 2011.
