Last week Delta announced pretty significant changes to their earning and redemption model for 2015. While they detailed out how you would earn miles, the details for redeeming miles were still TBD. Fortunately, they have gone ahead and released this redemption award chart for flights to/from the United States.
Changes for 2015:
- As of today, Delta has a three-tier redemption chart. Starting in 2015, it will be a five-tier chart.
- As of today, Delta only allows round-trip redemptions. Starting in 2015, you will be able to redeem for one-way awards, which is great!
- There will be a cash + points option, but those details have not yet been announced.
There has been a bunch of speculation over the new award chart and quite honestly it’s not too bad. Of course we will not know how availability is for each award category until 2015, but overall it is not a drastic change. Some redemption options got slightly better now, while some got slightly worse. But nothing major. At the lower tier level, it will now cost you 5,000 extra miles to fly to Hawaii in coach, but 5,000 miles less to fly to the Middle East and the South Asian Subcontinent region. In business class at the lowest tier level, nothing has increased, but flying to Northern South America has decreased by 10,000 miles.
2015 Redemption Chart:Â
You can view the online PDF version here.Â
Overall thoughts:Â Overall, I like that Delta did not hike up the mileage requirements drastically like United did just recently. However, it is really hard to tell if this will be a positive or negative change until 2015 comes around and we can see the availability. I am sure everyone prefers to redeem at the lowest level redemption (tier 1), so we will have to wait and see the availability. Unfortunately, with more tier levels, my assumption is that flights that typically had low level availability will start to move to the Tier 2 level availability, thus requiring more miles. Only time will tell though!
What are your thoughts?! And, if you entered my speculation giveaway, make sure to check out this mornings post to see the two winners!
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