Using Partners to Book Delta Award Flights for Domestic Travel

When booking with points and miles, you can often use one airline program’s miles to book a flight but actually fly on a different airline.

This is possible because airlines partner with other airlines and have reciprocal agreements. Airlines often release a limited number of seats for their partner airlines to book as award bookings. Not every flight or every route will have partner award availability, but many do.

This post is all about how to book Delta flights using miles from one of their partners.

Why Book Through a Partner Airline?

Wait, why wouldn’t I just book the Delta flight using Delta SkyMiles? You certainly can do that, and sometimes it makes the most sense, but booking a Delta flight with Delta SkyMiles is not always the best way. In fact, there can be a lot of advantages to booking through a partner airline.

Better Price

You might find that booking your flight through a partner airline is cheaper than booking directly with Delta.

Since each airline sets its own price for what it charges for an award flight, the exact same flight can cost vastly different amounts depending on who you book it through.

Partner airlines won’t be cheaper every time. Sometimes Delta will have the best price. But it can be worth your time to check, because you can potentially save a lot of miles. Especially if the flight you want is particularly expensive on the Delta website, or if the partner airline has a transfer bonus you can utilize.

More Predictable Pricing

Delta has some of the most volatile pricing of any airline. The prices for any given route can vary drastically from one week to the next. This can make it hard to plan for a trip, because it’s impossible to say how many miles you’ll need when it’s actually time to book.

Certain partner bookings offer more predictable pricing, which makes it a lot easier to figure out how many points you’ll need.

Easier to Get Miles

Since American Express is the only transfer partner of Delta Airlines, it can be hard to get a lot of Delta SkyMiles.

If you don’t have any American Express cards or Delta co-branded cards, it can take you a long time to earn enough Delta SkyMiles for a flight, especially when booking for multiple people.

It can be easier to get miles in another program like Virgin Atlantic or Flying Blue, since every major credit card company offers transfers to both of these programs. Then you can use those miles to book a Delta flight.

What’s more, there are often transfer bonuses from various banks to Flying Blue and Virgin Atlantic, making it even easier to get the miles you need for a flight.

Delta Partners

Delta is part of the SkyTeam Alliance, which includes Air France, KLM, Virgin Atlantic, and more. Beyond the SkyTeam Alliance, Delta partners with several other airlines as well, including LATAM, WestJet, and others.

You can use several different programs to book Delta flights, but here I’ll focus on the most practical options: Flying Blue and Virgin Atlantic.

Booking Delta Flights through Flying Blue

Flying Blue uses dynamic pricing, so prices change regularly.

Searching for Delta Flights through Flying Blue

Flying Blue is the joint loyalty program of Air France and KLM. You can go to FlyingBlue.us to start your search, but I find it easier to start with either Air France or KLM.

Whatever website you go to, find the booking page and sign in to your Flying Blue account. You need to be logged in to search for an award flight. Select “Book with Miles” to see award flights. Input your departure and arrival airports, then click “search flights”.

Pro Tip: To see a calendar of dates, leave the departure date blank.

From the calendar view, you’ll be able to easily see which dates have the cheapest flights. This doesn’t always work for partner flights, though.

The calendar won’t always match what’s actually bookable. For instance, if you click on a particular date from the calendar and look at the flights, you might find a Delta flight that’s actually cheaper than what the calendar view shows, or the cheapest flight might be more expensive than what the calendar shows.

When searching for multiple people, you’ll see the total price for all passengers. That makes it easy to know how many points you’ll need. Once you’ve found a flight you like and confirmed availability, you can transfer your points and proceed with the booking.

Seat Selection

When you book an economy flight, you’ll be able to select seats for free at check-in.

Booking Delta Flights through Virgin Atlantic

Virgin still uses an award chart for partner flights, so it’s easy to know exactly how much you’ll pay.

For flights within the US and Canada, the chart is distance based. Longer flights cost more miles, while shorter flights cost less.

Searching for Delta Flights through Virgin

Go to VirginAtlantic.com and sign in. On the search page, select the toggle button where it says “Search for Reward Seats”, then input your cities and departure date. You can search for either one way or round trip, but it’s typically easier to search for one way at a time.

If you need multiple tickets, make sure to add that as well.

To find the cheapest dates, scroll through the calendar at the top of the page.

Once you’ve found a flight you like and confirmed that there is space for your entire group, you can transfer your points and proceed with the booking.

Change and Cancellation fees:

Virgin Atlantic charges $100 per ticket to change or cancel. But they have a useful quirk — if the total taxes and fees on your booking were less than $100, you can just forfeit those fees instead of paying the full cancellation fee.

For domestic Delta flights in the US, taxes are $5.60 each way. So in practice, canceling a domestic Delta award booked through Virgin Atlantic is nearly free. You’d just lose that $5.60 or $11.20 on a round trip.

Price Comparison

Here are some comparison charts as an example. These are all round trip prices for one person.

Remember, both Delta and Flying Blue use dynamic pricing, so their prices change regularly. Pricing for these routes might be different when you go to book, these charts are just to give you an idea.

Sometimes, Delta will be the cheapest option, but sometimes Flying Blue or Virgin Atlantic might be cheaper. And just because one airline is the cheapest one day doesn’t mean it will still be the cheapest the next time you check.

The point is that any of these might be the best option on any given day, so it is worth the time to check. When you’re ready to book, take a few minutes to compare pricing. Consider any transfer bonuses that might be available, as well as the taxes and fees (banks periodically offer a bonus when you transfer, so your 50,000 points might become 60,000 miles).

You’ll pay more in taxes and fees with Flying Blue, so note those prices when making your comparisons. It could be worth paying a bit more in fees to pay fewer points, but then again, it might not be.

Atlanta (ATL) to New York (JFK)

Detroit (DTW) to Los Angeles (LAX)

Salt Lake City (SLC) to Honolulu (HNL)

Use an Award Flight Tool to Compare Prices Faster

Award search tools like PointsYeah.com and Seats.Aero allow you to search multiple carriers at once, so you can see which one is offering the best price. These tools aren’t perfect, but they can give you a good idea of what’s available.

Starting your search on one of these sites can save you some time. You can input a range of dates, multiple airports, select the minimum number of seats you need, and more.

Here’s an example of how to search using Seats.Aero:

Go to Seats.Aero and input your departure and arrival airports and preferred date. You can select several different airports if you’re flexible, such as HNL, OGG, and LIH. With a free version, you’re only able to search for award flights up to 60 days out. To see more dates, you’ll need a paid account.

Next filter the search to show flights that are in the SkyTeam alliance. For this particular route, these are all going to be Delta flights, but you can book them through either Delta, Flying Blue, or Virgin Atlantic.

You can sort the results using the up and down arrows on the bar above the search results. In this screenshot, I’ve selected to sort the results according to the lowest economy prices, but you can also sort by date, program, airport, and more.

The “Program” shows the program that you book through. To see what carrier the flight is actually on, click the little i on the right hand side. That will give you the specific flight information.

As you can see from the results, Flying Blue, Virgin, and Delta all have flights available to book on the 24th, and they’re all at different prices.

Before making any final plans, make sure to confirm availability on the website where you plan to book. For example, if you decide to book with Virgin, go to the Virgin Atlantic website and confirm that the seats are indeed available before transferring any points to book.

Should You Book Delta Flights Through a Partner?

Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. There really is no one right way to book. Booking directly with Delta will sometimes be the best option, but other times you can save a lot of points by booking through a partner.

When you’re ready to start planning your trip, take a few minutes to compare prices across all three of these options and see which one makes the most sense.

Want to learn more about transferring points? Check out our Points Transfer Guide.