Delta Sky Miles

...hotels and car hire companies). Delta Airlines has its Skymiles frequent flyer programme. It is designed to give bonus miles, preference in seating and at the check in gate, upgrades and free flights. It is also possible to view your account over the internet.

We fly from the North East of England to Florida two or three times a year (not ‘frequent’ perhaps by business standards but ‘frequent enough’ as a recreational pursuit). For ...
...Brussels. We also found that Delta and its code partners flew routes across the Atlantic at significant savings in comparison to UK carriers.

Three years ago it seemed a logical idea to join the Delta Skymiles programme.

We usually travel as a family of five. I therefore obtained five application cards from the on board magazines, duly filled them out and put them into one envelope along with all our boarding cards. ... more

It's that time of year again. No sooner than the cold turkey carcase has been consigned to the sandwich lunch box, the newspapers are full of thoughts of the Summer vacations to some. I use airlines from time to time - not as a business user, but in the interests of vacations and pleasure. I almost always book by internet (Expedia, Travelocity) and always by the current most time and monetarily economic route. I have of course seen the advertising on board, in the press and on line for the various loyalty schemes. The is a review of my experience of one of them. (I have no doubt that every other scheme is tainted with similar problems and hastles).

All airlines it seems have their schemes to reward regular users of their services. Most schemes are run in conjunction with ‘Service Partners’ which may include other airlines (using combined ticketing or code sharing, hotels and car hire companies). Delta Airlines has its Skymiles frequent flyer programme. It is designed to give bonus miles, preference in seating and at the check in gate, upgrades and free flights. It is also possible to view your account over the internet.

We fly from the North East of England to Florida two or three times a year (not ‘frequent’ perhaps by business standards but ‘frequent enough’ as a recreational pursuit). For a variety of reasons we try to avoid our national carriers and the two main airports in London - each would fill a review in its own right!!!. It comes as no surprise that the hubs nearest to and served most efficiently from our local airport are Amsterdam and Brussels. We also found that Delta and its code partners flew routes across the Atlantic at significant savings in comparison to UK carriers.

Three years ago it seemed a logical idea to join the Delta Skymiles programme.

We usually travel as a family of five. I therefore obtained five application cards from the on board magazines, duly filled them out and put them into one envelope along with all our boarding cards. As we have three surnames (family name, mother in law, step son) I also personally wrote a covering letter explaining the relationships within the family. These were then mailed to Delta from Florida (bear in mind that we were communicating with a US firm using the US mail).

Imagine my surprise when four welcoming packs and four Skymiles cards came to us some three to four weeks later – MY OWN application had gone missing. I tried telephoning Delta headquarters but could never get through to a human operator at the other end. I tried faxing the details. I tried writing. I even sent copies of the invoices from our travel agent showing the details of the flights. Although I finally did get my account opened, I never did get the full miles and bonuses credited.

Some months previous to opening the account, my wife and I visited New York on one of Delta’s at-the-time partners (Aer Lingus via Dublin). I had saved the boarding cards from this trip and sent these to Delta asking them to be registered in the scheme (retrospective registration for a certain time period is accepted). When the next statement arrived my flights had been recorded but my wife’s had not. I went through the same train of contacts again but the situation was never rectified.

We made two return flights during the Spring and Summer of 1999 with another of Delta’s partners (Sabena via Brussells and Atlanta). On the first trip one of our party was only credited with the outward flights. On the second trip my son and daughter failed to have their local flights to Brussells credited.

In 1999 Delta severed the links with Aer Lingus. In 2001 Delta and Sabena parted company. The prices we obtained for our two most recent trips were far cheaper flying American Airlines via London and so we didn't think to use our Skymiles accounts.

I have no quarrel with the comfort, food or service that we have received when flying with Delta. The flights have almost all been totally punctual and our bags never went missing. However the Skymiles scheme has been a dead loss. We have not had a single round trip when everyone in the party has been credited with the correct number of miles for the legs covered or received all the bonuses when they have been offered. We have now given up giving our Skymiles details when making bookings – even with Delta or its affiliates - it isn’t worth the effort. Funnily enough, just three weeks ago, both I and my stepson (but not the others in our little group) were sent letters with friendly greetings inviting us to look again at the Delta internet site and gain extra points for signing up for some offer or other.

As an incentive to keep us travelling by Delta I’m afraid it has been a complete failure.

 

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