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Delta SkyMiles Pay with Miles: How this cardholder benefit can help boost your elite status
Rachel Craft is a travel writer at TPG. She's excited about introducing more people to the world of points & miles and helping fellow travel newbies make the most of their points.
May 2, 2025 • 8 min read
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Quick summary
Delta's Pay with Miles feature allows select loyalty program members to redeem miles for Delta-operated flights at a fixed value of 1 cent per mile.
This option is available only to primary cardholders of eligible cobranded cards and requires a minimum of 5,000 miles per passenger, redeemable in 5,000-mile increments.
Pay with Miles can be used to cover part or all of a ticket, with no blackout dates or seat restrictions, but is not available on partner-operated flights.
While this method offers flexibility and can help earn more elite status credits, it typically provides less value per mile compared to standard award tickets, which TPG values at 1.2 cents each as of April 2025.
What to consider
Pay with Miles is only available to primary cardholders of eligible cobranded cards and cannot be used by authorized users.
Redeeming miles this way may yield fewer cents per mile than standard award bookings, potentially reducing overall value.
Using Pay with Miles can help you earn more elite status credits, especially if you cover the full base fare with miles.
What you'll miss from the article
A detailed comparison of Pay with Miles, standard award tickets and Miles + Cash options, including how each affects elite status qualification and mile value.
Generated by AI with support from our editorial team.
Update: Some offers mentioned below are no longer available. View the current offers here.
Pay with Miles offers another way to redeem your Delta miles beyond standard award tickets and Miles + Cash redemptions. You’ll get a fixed value of 1 cent per mile using Pay with Miles, but you can also earn more Medallion Qualification Dollars toward Delta elite status.
Keep reading to learn how to use Delta Pay with Miles and why it might be worth redeeming your miles this way.
Pay with Miles is a feature available exclusively to SkyMiles members who hold one of the following cards:
Delta SkyMiles® Blue American Express Card
Delta SkyMiles® Gold American Express Card
Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card
Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card
To use Pay with Miles, you must be the primary cardmember; this feature isn’t available to authorized users. You must also have a minimum of 5,000 SkyMiles per passenger in your account. For example, to use Pay with Miles for a two-person booking, you’ll need at least 10,000 SkyMiles.
You can use Pay with Miles to cover part or all of your ticket(s) at a rate of 1 cent per mile. You must pay in increments of 5,000 miles, so for each 5,000 miles you redeem, you’ll save $50 off the ticket price.
There are no blackout dates or seat restrictions with Pay with Miles, and no limit to how many miles you can redeem this way. However, Pay with Miles is only available on flights operated by Delta or a Delta Connection carrier. If the flight you’re looking at is operated by a partner airline, the Pay with Miles option won’t show up.
TPG values Delta SkyMiles at 1.2 cents each as of April 2025, so you will lose some value if you opt to redeem award tickets using the Pay with Miles benefit; basically, it isn’t the best way to maximize your miles.
However, since award prices vary widely, you may find that Pay with Miles isn’t a significantly worse option than redeeming miles for an award ticket. And it may be worth losing a little value because you can potentially earn more Medallion Qualification Dollars on your purchase, which we’ll go into later.
Take this Delta-operated flight from Asheville, North Carolina, to Frankfurt, for example. A Main Cabin award ticket costs 106,500 SkyMiles (thanks to Delta’s TakeOff15 perk for select cardmembers), compared to a cash price of $1,186. That comes out to 1.1 cents per mile, not much better than the value you’d get using Pay with Miles.
DELTADELTA
On the other hand, this flight from New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) to Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) costs $259 in cash or 13,100 miles for an award ticket, giving you a much better value of 2 cents per mile.
DELTADELTA
In this case, you’d be losing significantly more value by going the Pay with Miles route — but it could still make sense if Medallion status is important to you. Here’s why.
To see Pay with Miles options, you’ll need to log in to your Delta SkyMiles account before searching for flights.
When you pull up an eligible flight — meaning the flight is operated by Delta or Delta Connection and you have at least 5,000 miles per passenger — you’ll see “Pay with Miles Eligible” below the cash price. Once you choose your flight and reach the purchase screen, scroll down to find the Pay with Miles option in the payment section.
In this JFK-BOS example, a refundable Main Cabin fare costs $288.49 with taxes and fees. My dad, who has a Delta Gold Amex card, has the option to redeem miles in increments of 5,000, up to 30,000 miles for the total ticket price. To use Pay with Miles, he must pay the remaining balance with his eligible Delta Amex card.
DELTA
If you pay for any part of your ticket with cash, you’ll earn miles based on the cash portion minus the taxes and fees. You won’t earn any miles if you use miles to cover the entire ticket price.
Where this gets interesting is earning Medallion Qualification Dollars, Delta's currency for earning elite status. If you pay any part of the ticket with cash, you’ll earn 1 MQD per dollar on the cash portion minus the taxes and fees. But if you pay for the whole base fare with miles, you’ll earn MQDs as if you’d paid for the whole thing with cash.
In this example, if my dad chose to pay 25,000 miles plus $38.49 in cash, he would earn 35 miles and 5 MQDs for the portion he paid out of pocket.
DELTA
On the other hand, if he used Pay with Miles for the whole ticket, he’d earn 0 miles and 255 MQDs.
DELTA
Let’s compare this to a traditional award ticket for the same flight, which costs 13,100 miles. Delta awards MQDs on award tickets, calculated by the number of miles redeemed divided by 100 (government-imposed taxes and fees do not earn MQDs). This ticket costs 13,100 miles, so it would earn 131 MQDs.
So, if you’re looking to stretch your miles as far as possible, you’re better off booking the award ticket. If earning status is your top priority, you may want to shell out more miles and earn more MQDs using Pay with Miles.
Delta offers a similar payment method called Miles + Cash, which is available to all Delta SkyMiles members (not just cardholders). Miles + Cash is a payment option that shows up when you search for flights; you can choose "$USD," "Miles," or "Miles + Cash" in the top right.
Miles + Cash tickets are still considered award bookings, because you’re essentially buying some miles to book your flight. Unlike when using Pay with Miles, Miles + Cash prices are fixed, so you can’t choose how many miles or dollars you want to pay.
Going back to our JFK-BOS example, which costs $259 in cash or 13,100 miles for an award ticket, the Miles + Cash option is 10,500 miles plus $96. When you subtract taxes and fees, you’re essentially paying $90 for 2,600 miles. That’s a price of about 3.5 cents per mile — yikes.
Some Miles + Cash tickets present a better value, while others actually require more miles and dollars than a simple award ticket in the same fare class. Either way, this isn’t usually a great use of your SkyMiles.
Because Miles + Cash bookings are considered award tickets, you won’t earn any miles. You’ll earn MQDs on the cash portion minus the taxes and fees at a rate of 1 MQD per dollar. So, for the JFK-BOS flight above, you’d earn only 90 MQDs. You’ll get closer to elite status by booking a standard award ticket (131 MQDs), and even closer using Pay with Miles (255 MQDs).
Delta's Pay with Miles is a useful feature that Delta Amex cardholders should be aware of. If you’re pursuing Delta Medallion status this year, it may be worth spending the extra miles to earn more MQDs. But if getting the most out of your SkyMiles is your top priority, you’ll probably want to stick to standard award tickets.
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By commenting, you agree to our Community Guidelines to help create a positive space for conversation. The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser, our partners, or The Points Guy (“TPG”). They have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any of these parties. All responses are submitted by individual contributors, and neither the bank advertiser, our partners, nor TPG are responsible for ensuring that all posts and/or questions are answered.
