Introduction
There’s a lot of airline credit cards available that offer a variety of benefits – whether it’s bonus miles on certain spend, free checked bags, club passes, etc. One perk that I think is overlooked when considering an airline card credit is whether it makes your award travel any cheaper. Of course having a lot of airlines miles is great, but when you can’t find any reasonable redemption rates, it can be hard to feel like you are getting a good value.
Both United and Delta offer discounted award flights when you hold their credit cards, and I think this perk alone can make up for the annual fee. Let’s take a closer look at each.
United MileagePlus Card Miles Discount (10% Minimum)
United offers a variety of MileagePlus credit cards with annual fees ranging from $0 to $695. You can compare the benefits of these cards on United’s website for both personal and business cards. Between the cards on offer, all of them provide a savings of “10% or more booking with miles”, except the no annual fee Gateway card. I’ll let you decide which card best meets your needs but know that you’ll need to pay at least a $150 annual fee to take advantage of this perk. If you go with the blue United Explorer card, the annual fee is waived for the first year so you could cancel it prior to the first fee becoming due.
So what does the 10% or more booking with miles discount provide? Well at a minimum, you will get a 10% discount off the public rate of the flight when booking with miles, but in my experience, it can be much more and delivers incredible value.
Let’s see some examples starting with a basic 10% off. When you access United.com, be sure to sign in and search for a flight with miles. You will see a 10% discount automatically applied to the search results. This happens as the credit card will be linked to your MileagePlus account, so it knows to provide the discount when you search.
Above, you can see a 10% discount applied for a sample domestic flight. These savings aren’t all that significant themself, but if you do redeem for a number of domestic flights throughout the year, the savings could add up. If you are short on points, the small discount could also allow you to make a redemption you otherwise couldn’t.
Where the real value comes in is for international United Polaris Business Class flights. This is where I often see a much higher discount than just 10% off. Below is a sample itinerary between San Fransisco and Singapore. If you redeem for Polaris Business Class, the public rate is 360k miles while you’ll get a 75% discount and pay only 90K miles just by holding a United MileagePlus card. That’s a savings of 270K miles which is a phenomenal deal!
Now is every flight going to show a 75% savings like this between San Fransisco and Singapore? No, but in my experience you can find a handful of days each month if you have flexibility. I’ve seen this discounted award space vary widely, so if you check back on occasion, you’ll probably see different dates pop up.
For the second flight result that’s 324k in business class, you’ll notice just the standard 10% discount. However, that’s still a savings of 36K miles if you need to purchase a more costly redemption. Even if you value United MileagePlus points at 1 cent per point (I’d value them higher personally), you’d only need to save yourself 15K miles a year to justify the $150 annual fee on the entry level United Explorer Card. That doesn’t account for the other perks you might get value out of on this card, such as priority boarding, free checked bags, club passes and so on. In my opinion, this card is a no brainer if you redeem United Miles on a yearly basis.
Delta SkyMiles Credit Card (15% Discount – TakeOff 15)
Like United, Delta offers a portfolio of personal and business credit cards with annual fees ranging from $0 to $650. To take advantage of Delta’s mileage discount (called TakeOff 15), you’ll need at least the Gold Card ($150 annual fee), so the no annual fee Blue Card is not eligible.
Delta’s Takeoff 15 card member perk is as straight forward as it sounds – you’ll get 15% off all mileage redemptions. Just sign into your Delta account before making an award search and you’ll see the discounted rates. Unfortunately, Delta only provides a flat 15% off compared to United, which provides a minimum of 10% – leaving less opportunity for outsized value.
Regardless, if you redeem Delta miles on a yearly basis, you might be able to make up the annual fee easily. As an example of a domestic flight redemption, you can see the 15% applied across the available cabins. As with United, if you value SkyMiles at 1 cent per point, you could make up the annual fee with 15K in SkyMiles savings over a year.
Delta is certainly much stingier than United when it comes to discounted award space, but throughout the year, I’ve periodically seen Delta One business class flights between 100-150K miles released to/from the US to both Europe and Asia. The 15% discount along with an initial card sign up bonus (typically from 80K to 200K during promotional periods) could help to put you in the range of a business class redemption without needing to source additional miles elsewhere.
Airline Credit Cards with Discounted Awards – Pilot Debrief
Historically, I’ve struggled to find a reason to sign up for and retain airline affiliated credit cards as often times the perks don’t justify the annual fee – especially if you already hold airline elite status. Delta and United offer discounted and/or improved award availability to credit card owners, a perk which alone makes up the annual fee for me personally. Here’s to hoping American introduces something similar in the future.
