All about Delta TakeOff 15: 15% mileage discount on Delta award tickets

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TakeOff 15 is a benefit of many Delta credit cards that gives you a 15% discount on the miles price of award tickets you book with Delta. You’ll get the benefit automatically if you’re booking an eligible ticket and hold an eligible SkyMiles credit card. Of course, terms and conditions apply and not every ticket sold on Delta.com will get a 15% discount.

Here’s what you need to know about the Delta TakeOff 15 discount.

Which cards offer the TakeOff 15 discount?

All of the Delta credit cards that carry an annual fee offer the TakeOff 15 discount. If you hold any of the following cards, you’ll receive the TakeOff 15 discount when booking eligible flights:

• Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card
• Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card
• Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card
• Delta SkyMiles® Gold Business American Express Card
• Delta SkyMiles® Platinum Business American Express Card
• Delta SkyMiles® Reserve Business American Express Card

Which award tickets get the TakeOff 15 discount?

You can get the TakeOff 15 discount on Delta and Delta connection award flights you book on Delta.com. Here’s a bit more on which tickets qualify for the TakeOff 15 discount.

• Only Delta and Delta Connection® operated and ticketed flights. Flights operated by Delta’s partner airlines or itineraries including Delta’s partners will not qualify for the TakeOff 15 discount.
• You can book a ticket for anyone and enjoy the discount. The TakeOff 15 discount applies if the SkyMiles member whose miles are used to book the ticket holds an eligible Delta credit card.
• No Pay with Miles or Miles + Cash tickets. These types of tickets are not eligible for the TakeOff 15 discount.
• Any cabin. The TakeOff 15 discount applies in all cabins, including Basic Economy and premium cabins.

How to use the Delta TakeOff 15 discount

If you are the primary cardholder of a Delta SkyMiles credit card, using the Delta TakeOff 15 discount is as simple as booking an award ticket using your miles at Delta.com.

Once you have logged in to your SkyMiles account, the SkyMiles prices of flights will reflect your discount at every step of the booking process. You don’t need to do anything extra to apply your discount.

How to book a Delta award ticket using SkyMiles

Booking an award ticket using SkyMiles is simple. Most itineraries with Delta SkyMiles can be booked online. Your first step is to search for your travel at Delta.com.

Enter your origin and destination airports, select one-way or round-trip, and select your travel dates. You will want to tick the box by “Shop with Miles” to see travel priced in SkyMiles.

If you have some flexility, you can select “My dates are flexible.” For our example search, we’ll do this to show the complete booking process.

By default you’ll be searching for all airfares, including Basic Economy. Delta Basic Economy airfares come with a bunch of restrictions:

• No seat selection ahead of time
• No changes allowed. (Cancelation is allowed for a $99-$199 cancellation charge.)
• No medallion upgrade benefits
• No MQD accrual.

Unless you intend to book basic economy, you might want to click on “Advanced Search” and select “Main Cabin” under “Best Fares For.”

If you searched for a round trip and selected “My dates are flexible” your screen display a matrix showing you the lowest prices available for departures up to three days before your selected departure date and three days after your selected return date. If you qualify for the TakeOff 15 discount, the prices shown on this screen will reflect that discount.

Let’s say that we have some flexibility to return on Tuesday, April 9th, but we can depart no earlier than Thursday. We can select this option for 22,900 SkyMiles, plus $12. Click “Continue” once you’ve selected the dates you want.

If you have even more flexibility, you can click on “Price Calendar” at the top of the page. This will bring up a calendar showing you trips of your selected trip length. You can change trip length to update prices on the calendar or page through the calendar to see pricing for the entire year.

Once you’ve selected your dates from the calendar, or if you didn’t search with flexible dates, you’ll now select your outbound flight. Here’s the screen that shows you flight options. The default view generally shows you the lowest-priced non-stop option on top, but Delta offers a lot of options for filtering and sorting your search under “Sort & Filter.”

The evening flight at 8:15 works fine for us, so we’ll select that flight, starting at 22,900 SkyMiles.

If you want to see prices in terms of dollars, you can click on “$ USD” under “Show Price In:” at the top of the screen. I like to do this to check on the value I’m getting out of my SkyMiles. In this case, we’re getting almost 1.7 cents per mile. Not too shabby for SkyMiles.

Once we’ve selected our departure flight, we can select our return flight. 7:45am seems a bit early, but the 2:30pm option is good and it is offered at the same price as other options on that day. Let’s select that flight.

Finally, we’ll see the checkout screen. On this screen, we’ll enter passenger information and payment information, request upgrades and select whether we want additional trip insurance. Once we’ve entered all of our information and we’re ready to purchase our flight, we’ll click “Complete Purchase” at the bottom of the page. (Scroll down on the page to see the button.)

And, just like that, our trip is booked!

Delta award ticket tips and tricks

Change/cancel policy: Other than Basic Economy tickets, Delta awards tickets originating in the United States and Canada can be changed or canceled for free. If you cancel your eligible ticket prior to departure, you’ll get your miles back and receive the amount you paid for taxes and fees back to your credit card.

Price drops: If the price of your flight drops after you book it, you can re-book your flight and receive a refund of any applicable fare difference in miles.

Elite upgrades: Other than basic economy, Delta award tickets are eligible for elite upgrades.

MQDs: Award travel on Delta accrues Medallion Qualifying Dollars (MQDs.) based on the number of miles redeemed for your ticket. You’ll get 1 MQD for every 100 SkyMiles redeemed.

What is Delta TakeOff 15 worth?

If you regularly redeem SkyMiles, the TakeOff 15 benefit can be worth quite a bit and may even be a huge part of the value proposition of holding a Delta credit card. In fact, the benefit may alone justify the cost of holding one of the lower-end Delta credit cards.

For example, if you redeem 100,000 miles a year, you’ll save 15,000 SkyMiles if all of your flights are eligible for Delta TakeOff 15. Saving that amount of miles on you award redemptions could largely justify the ongoing annual fee of the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card or Delta SkyMiles® Gold Business American Express Card before you even consider those cards’ other benefits.

Bottom line on Delta TakeOff 15

Delta TakeOff 15 is a benefit of most SkyMiles credit cards that can save you 15% off the miles cost of award tickets you book with Delta and Delta Connection®. The benefit is built into Delta’s award ticket booking process, making the benefit an easy win for Delta SkyMiles credit card holders.

Frequently asked questions

Rates and fees for Delta Air Lines credit cards

• For rates and fees of the Delta SkyMiles® Blue American Express Card, please visit this link: See Rates and Fees; terms apply
• For rates and fees of the Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card, please visit this link: See Rates and Fees; terms apply
• For rates and fees of the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card, please visit this link: See Rates and Fees; terms apply
• For rates and fees of the Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card, please visit this link: See Rates and Fees; terms apply
• For rates and fees of the Delta SkyMiles® Gold Business American Express Card, please visit this link: See Rates and Fees
• For rates and fees of the Delta SkyMiles® Platinum Business American Express Card, please visit this link: See Rates and Fees
• For rates and fees of the Delta SkyMiles® Reserve Business American Express Card, please visit this link: See Rates and Fees

Advertiser disclosure: Cards and Points has partnered with CardRatings for our coverage of credit card products. Cards and Points and CardRatings may receive a commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on this site are from advertisers. Compensation may affect how and where card products appear on the site. The site does not include all card companies or all available offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities. Terms apply to all credit card benefits.