How to Book Delta Flights with Chase Ultimate Reward Points
Whether you're a rewards pro or a credit card rookie, everyone wants to travel for as little money as possible. In today's world of seemingly soaring airfares, achieving that dream vacation can feel like an uphill battle, and the allure of exploring exotic destinations often becomes overshadowed by financial concerns. The reality of travel is that, more often than not, flights take up a significant portion of any travel budget.
But luckily for consumers, airline miles and credit card points can go a long way toward booking travel and saving travelers money. And, for those looking to travel within or from the USA, Delta Air Lines is well known as one of the best airlines for using points/airline miles. However, while Delta has an excellent interface for booking flights with SkyMiles, there is an issue.
Delta only has one formal credit card transfer partner: American Express.
Transferring your points from AmEx to Delta is extremely straightforward—enter your Delta SkyMiles account number, transfer your points, and book your award flights. But for those hoping to use other credit card reward systems to book their flights, such as from Capital One or Chase Bank, there appears to be no way to transfer your points to Delta directly.
But for those in the latter category, don’t fret; there is a relatively unknown strategy that we use to leverage our Chase Ultimate Rewards Points or Capital One Miles for Delta flights:
Strategically utilizing alliance member programs!
Delta Air Lines is a key member of the SkyTeam Airline Alliance, an organization consisting of various international airlines that cover a significant portion of the world’s air travel.
If you’re unfamiliar with this concept, at its core, an airline alliance is a coalition of airlines that collaborate to offer a seamless travel experience. By enabling code-sharing and cross-booking of flights, these alliances allow you to book flights on any of the alliance airlines through your main operating airline (e.g., Delta). Through these alliances, you gain a whole new level of flexibility and choice for your travel plans, as airline alliances often also grant access to a wide array of status-based privileges across the participating airlines.
We’ve already discussed that Chase Ultimate Reward points can’t be transferred directly to Delta Air Lines, but that there is a method for booking most Delta flights (and particularly your international Delta flights) with your Chase points.
Instead of trying to transfer your Ultimate Reward points to Delta, you instead transfer directly to one of the other members of the SkyTeam Alliance which is a Chase transfer partner, and then book your Delta flight through that marketing airline! While there’s an extra step involved compared to booking directly, this strategy allows you to book your Delta flights with your Chase Ultimate Reward points.
See below for the full list of airlines included in the SkyTeam Alliance that have the potential to allow you to book Delta flights.
The full list of airlines currently in the SkyTeam Alliance
Among these airlines, Air France/KLM FlyingBlue and Virgin Atlantic allow you to exchange your Chase Ultimate Rewards at a 1:1 ratio. Therefore, these airlines are the first to look at when trying to book your next Delta flight with Chase points.
Let’s look at an example of how to book a Delta flight with Chase Ultimate Rewards points:
An Example Booking
Let’s say we want to use our Chase points to book a one-way ticket on Delta Air Lines flight DL57 from Boston (BOS) to London (LHR), departing at 7:30pm and arriving at 7am. When booking with flight directly with Delta, it would cost approximately $700 or 56,000 SkyMiles for a regular economy ticket (see below). Keep in mind that because we are booking a one-way flight for this example, the cash prices will be inflated as opposed to a round-trip itinerary (Delta often offers dramatically cheaper prices for round-trip bookings).
The cash and mile price for booking DL58 directly through Delta Air Lines for a flight on May 21, 2024
If you have enough Delta SkyMiles, you can proceed to book this flight directly through Delta’s website. As we pointed out, American Express is a transfer partner of Delta; to book this flight with your American Express Membership Rewards points, you can transfer your points directly to Delta and book the flight as normal. However, to complete this booking with our Chase points, we need to get more creative and make sure of a transfer partner which is also part of the SkyTeam Alliance and a Chase travel partner.
Related: The Full Chase Bank Credit Card Tier List
While we discussed that there are several choices possible SkyTeam partners to use, for this particular BOS-LHR flight, we are going to make use of Virgin Atlantic’s and Air France’s/KLM’s reward program. As a general rule, when booking a Delta flight with Chase points, always look at Virgin Atlantic and Air France/KLM first—Virgin and Flying Blue consistently offer cheap flights and have incredibly easy-to-use platforms.
For this booking, we’re going to begin by searching on the Virgin Atlantic and Flying Blue websites for the same route and date as our original Delta flight. In this example, when we search for flights from BOS-LHR on the same date as our target flight, we see a few different flight options, including our target flight (see below) operated by Delta Air Lines. To be sure the flight you see is the same as the target flight, look for either “operated by Delta Air Lines” on the booking or the Delta logo.
DL58 when booked through Virgin Atlantic (top) and Air France/KLM Flying Blue (bottom)
After comparing these two options, it is clear that Flying Blue offers the better deal for this particular Delta flight. Therefore, to book DL58 with our Chase points all we have to do is transfer the points from our Chase Bank account directly to our Flying Blue Rewards account. If you’re unfamiliar with how to transfer your American Express points, make sure to check out our guide for how to transfer Chase points to an airline. While this process is largely straightforward, transferring points can be sufficiently confusing for those who are unfamiliar with the steps.
Once your points are transferred, you can then book the Delta flight on Flying Blue with points as normal, effectively booking the Delta flight with Chase UR points!
Important note: Always double-check that the route you are hoping to book has seat availability before you transfer any points (we particularly suggest calling for any flights costing over ~50k points). Transferring points only works in one direction—once you transfer your Chase Bank points away, you can never get them back into your Chase account. As well, keep an eye out for “phantom award space”, which is when a flight appears to be able to be booked with points, but then fails to give you a ticket when you go to make the booking. While phantom award space is exceedingly rare, it is always worth confirming the availability to avoid having hundreds of thousands of points potentially get stuck with an airline you aren’t going to be able to fly in the future!
Summary
Using your Chase Bank points to book Delta flights is a great way to make the most of your points across ecosystems. Luckily, this strategy works for a variety of airlines, with several shared transfer partners between Chase Bank/American Express and Chase Bank/Capital One. Combining your points in these ecosystems can enhance the value of your rewards and travel, allowing you to travel farther and enjoy more luxurious flights.
We hope this article helped you book your next Delta flight with Chase points! If you’re interested in similar topics, make sure to check out our guides to transferring credit card points to American Airlines, transferring points to American Airlines, and booking Hyatt hotels with Chase UR points.
