You only need to poke around Delta's website or app for a few minutes, hunting for a business class seat in Europe or Asia, to get sick to your stomach. If you want to book a Delta lie-flat seat somewhere abroad, rates of 400,000 SkyMiles or more – each way – are the norm.
This. Is. Gross.
But there's a better way. In fact, there are a few.
Using miles from a partner airline like Air France (whose miles are even easier to earn thanks to credit card transfer partnerships), you might be able to book those exact same Delta One seats for a fraction of the miles. On the off-chance you find a half-decent-looking fare in cash – think $2,000 or so roundtrip – there are a few ways to use points from banks like Chase or Amex to cover the whole cost. And if you're lucky (and patient), you could even catch a rare SkyMiles flash sale to book that lie-flat seat for a far more reasonable amount.
So yes, believe it or not, booking a Delta business class seat for a bargain can be done – workarounds like this are the key. Here's how.
Not all Delta One business class seats are created equal: Check out our breakdown of the best … and the worst!
Wait for a SkyMiles Flash Sale
We've got a mantra when it comes to Delta's mileage program: If you want to fly business class, forget about SkyMiles. That's the rule.
But rules always have exceptions.
Over just the last few months, we've found a surprising amount of excellent SkyMiles flash sales with deeply discounted Delta One rates for our Thrifty Traveler Premium members. A few stellar standouts include:
- Nationwide flights from the U.S. to Seoul (ICN) in Delta One Suites as low as 85,000 SkyMiles each way
- Delta One Suites on the new route to Taipei (TPE) for as low as 83,000 SkyMiles – the lowest business class rate we've seen from Delta since 2020!
- Lie-flat Delta One fares all the way to Brisbane (BNE) in Australia for 123,000 SkyMiles each way
- Roundtrips to Auckland (AKL) for under 300,000 SkyMiles total
- And going back a few months more, we've seen fares to Tokyo-Haneda (HND) as low as 85,000 SkyMiles each way, too
- Business class deals to Europe using SkyMiles have been even harder to find, but we found some roundtrip transatlantic fares as low as 166,000 SkyMiles late last year
Most of those are just from the last few months, though they're all long-gone now. Are they the best deals in the world of points and miles? Hardly, especially when there are plenty of ways to book business class seats for 50,000 miles or less via other airlines.
But if SkyMiles are what you've got – and that's the case for many diehard Delta flyers – these rates are about as good as it gets these days.
Let me be clear: Even deals like still fairly rare, and they come and go quickly. But whenever we find them, we always send Thrifty Traveler Premium members an alert for business class redemptions like these.
And when they're this good and this rare, we also send a text alert so you can search and book as soon as possible.
If you want the best deal redeeming SkyMiles for business class, you'll need a Delta co-branded Amex card like the *delta skymiles gold card*. That triggers Delta's TakeOff 15 benefit, an automatic 15% discount when using SkyMiles to book Delta award seats.
Still, we wouldn't exactly encourage piling up SkyMiles by swiping your Delta credit card everywhere you go – odds are, you'll still need a mountain of them. You'd be much better off earning points from cards like the *amex gold* or *amex platinum*.
That way, you can sit on a bank of points and transfer them instantly over to Delta if a great deal pops up. If that doesn't happen, you're not married to SkyMiles – you could send them to other Amex transfer partners, including others that could come in handy to book Delta business class for even less.
Or Try to Upgrade with Your SkyMiles
The best way to book Delta business class for a bargain right now might be by booking an economy seat at the start.
Delta makes it easier to upgrade your seat than virtually any other airline: If seats are open, you can pay your way to upgrade. But easy doesn't mean cheap. Cash rates to do so are regularly north of $2,000 for a long-haul flight – and since the SkyMiles upgrade rates are tied to the cash price, that's 200,000 SkyMiles.
But earlier this year, we noticed an undeniable trend: Upgrades on flights to Europe and even Asia were cheaper than … well, maybe ever, with many travelers scoring Delta One upgrades for just $500 or $600 within weeks – if not days – of departure.
- Not one but two travelers flying separately from Atlanta (ATL) to London-Heathrow (LHR) upgraded from economy to Delta One for $499 (or 49,900 SkyMiles) per passenger
- Days before making the trip back home, one flyer snagged a Delta One upgrade from Milan (MXP) to Atlanta (ATL) by paying just 44,900 SkyMiles
- Flying back from Amsterdam (AMS) to Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP), members saw business class upgrades dip as low as $449 each
- About a week before departure, one traveler just upgraded to Delta One Suites from Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) to Seoul (ICN) for just $599 each
This is not a slam dunk – you're still probably more likely to see upgrade prices north of $1,000 or more.
Still, it's an undeniable trend with low upgrade rates on Delta more prevalent than in recent memory. And that means it's worth double-, triple-, quadruple-, and even quintuple-checking your Delta flights in the weeks and days before a trip overseas. While you might initially see eye-popping prices, the odds that the cost to upgrade falls below $1,000 (or half that) seem greater than ever.
But if you want any chance at a cheap upgrade, your first step is the most important one: Don't book Delta basic economy, as those cheap fares aren't eligible for upgrades whatsoever.
Read more: Upgrading is the Best (& Cheapest) Way to Book Delta One Business Class Now
Fly to Delta One Europe … Using Air France Miles
If Europe is calling and business class is on your bucket list, you may want to look away from your stash of SkyMiles and instead look to a pair of partners in Paris and Amsterdam instead: Air France and KLM's Flying Blue program.
Delta is often charging 300,000 SkyMiles or more for these lie-flat transatlantic fares. And after years of charging just 50,000 points and under $6, booking these Delta One awards from the U.S. to Europe will now also cost you more than $1,000 in cold, hard cash.
You know who doesn't do that? You guessed it: Air France/KLM Flying Blue. That's true whether you're flying Delta nonstop to London-Heathrow (LHR), Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG), or virtually any Delta route to Europe.
That's right, you'll pay just $10.10 in cash when booking a Delta One award ticket from the U.S. to London. While it'll cost you more miles, that's easily worth the tradeoff to save several hundred dollars per ticket.
Exactly how many miles it'll cost you depends on where you're departing from: The longer the flight across the pond, the more miles it requires to book. Short nonstops from Boston (BOS) and New York City (JFK) are the cheapest at under 70,000 miles while flights from Midwestern hubs like Detroit (DTW) and Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) typically cost around 75,000 miles each way. And for the longest flights from Seattle (SEA) and Salt Lake City (SLC), you can expect to pay closer to 100,000 miles.
Don't worry: Flying Blue miles are some of the easiest miles to earn thanks to transfer partnerships from all the top travel credit cards like the *chase sapphire preferred*, *venture x*, or the *amex gold*.
The challenge now is that you'll need to find award availability to actually find these low rates flying Delta business class. And that can be incredibly hit or miss. It's been a few months since we've seen solid award space bookable through Flying Blue.
Throw in a well-timed transfer bonus to Air France/KLM Flying Blue from banks like Chase or Amex, and these slightly better deals get … well, even better!
But if you're trying to get from Europe back to the states in Delta One, you can do even better.
But Book with Virgin When Flying Home from Europe
Virgin Atlantic did us all dirty earlier this year, finally killing off the incredible sweet spot to book Delta One to Europe for far less.
But the U.K. carrier didn't exactly finish the job. Sure, a one-way flight from the U.S. to Europe now costs as low as 47,500 points … plus more than $1,000 in taxes and fees. But a flight home from Europe?
Those have escaped those nasty surcharges. You can still book a Delta One award ticket from Europe to the U.S. for 47,500 points and under $400 in fees – and sometimes less.
For reasons we can't quite explain, Virgin isn't tacking on that nasty, $1,000 surcharge on these westbound flights from Europe back to the states. So while you'll do better booking a one-way flight over to Europe using Air France or KLM, you'll be saving some serious miles by booking your return flight home via Virgin instead – while paying roughly the same amount in fees.
Exactly what you'll pay in money and miles depends on where you're departing from, where you're flying to, and when you're traveling:
- Flights departing Amsterdam (AMS) and many other European cities typically get hit with under $300 in fees, while Paris costs north of $400 each way
- Flights to most Delta hubs will cost you 47,500 points each way … though longer flights to airports like Seattle (SEA) or Salt Lake City (SLC) clock in at 67,500 points
- But in peak seasons like parts of spring and throughout much of the summer, that gets kicked up to 57,500 points each way to the East Coast and Midwest – or 77,500 points to anywhere west of the Mississippi River
Just to showcase how much better of a deal it is booking a return flight from home via Virgin: Flying Blue is charging nearly 120,000 miles for this exact same flight from Paris-Charles de Gaulle (CDG) to Los Angeles (LAX).
Finding the award availability to book at these rates is still tough sledding. Getting a Thrifty Traveler Premium alert or using an award search tool like Seats.aero – which has an incredibly handy “Delta One Finder” – is your best bet.
Find a Cash Fare & Make It Free with Points
The words “business class” and “cheap” rarely go hand in hand – especially with Delta, of all airlines. But trust me, cheap Delta One business class fares are out there. And when you find one, there's are a few relatively easy ways to make it free using credit card points.
Flying business class, cheap is still a relative term. The normal fares of $5,000 or more roundtrip certainly aren't a deal, but how about roughly half that? Starting a search with Google Flights, it was fairly easy to find a roughly $2,800 roundtrip fare from Boston (BOS) to Dublin (DUB) in Delta One.
We've found far cheaper Delta business class fares for our Thrifty Traveler Premium subscribers over the years, though…
- Earlier this year, we found nonstop Delta fares to Rome (FCO), Milan (MXP), Madrid (MAD), and Barcelona (BCN) for under $2,300 roundtrip
- We've also recently seen Delta One tickets to Buenos Aires (EZE) for $2,600 roundtrip or to Lima (LIM) for as low as $1,151
- Looking to stay closer to home? How about a rare chance to fly Delta One Suites on the Airbus A330-900neo from Seattle (SEA) to Honolulu (HNL) earlier this spring for just $1,315 roundtrip?
But this is Thrifty Traveler. There's always an angle to find some additional savings … like taking a cheap flight and making it free using credit card points.
Credit card points from banks like Capital One, Chase, and American Express open an avenue to make that happen – without forcing you to jump through all the hoops of finding award availability and transferring your points. Let's make it real with that $1,300-some fare to Hawaii in Delta One suites with a few examples.
- Using Capital One's insanely easy method of covering any travel purchase using Capital One Miles, you could book that fare on your *venture x*, then go back and erase the entire purchase using 131,600 miles
- Chase Ultimate Rewards points are even more valuable when booking flights through the Chase Travel℠ portal: You could book that same flight for 105,280 points from the *chase sapphire preferred* … or, better yet, just 87,700 or so points if you have the *chase sapphire reserve*
- But the best deal of all is reserved for travelers with *biz platinum*, which gets you a 35% points rebate on any premium cabin tickets booked through the travel portal – for up to 500,000 points back each year. After that 35% rebate kicks in, it brings down the final tally to roughly 85,500 Amex points.
Bottom Line
Don't resign yourself to paying Delta's sky-high rates to fly business class abroad.
If you're patient – and I mean really patient – you can, in fact, get a good deal using your SkyMiles to fly business class, whether you get an alert to book a lie-flat seat at a discounted rate or wait to upgrade days before departure. But better yet, turning away from SkyMiles and instead focusing on other points and miles programs can help you score a serious bargain on Delta business class … even when the airline itself is charging a king's ransom.
Need to share if you have a status with the airlines as I have never been able to upgrade. Please give more clarity rather than exciting general public how easy it’s to get an upgrade.
Why is it that I never see any point redempions using points from Diners Club card and only AMEX?