Diving into Delta's huge card offers | Frequent Miler on the Air Ep375 | 9-17-26

Frequent Miler on the Air

This episode of Frequent Miler on the Air dives into Delta's latest major credit card offers, exploring how they can support status matching

Key takeaways

• Delta's new card offers include unique perks beyond just miles, such as flight certificates and elite status bonuses.
• The timing of sign-ups—especially near year-end—can be strategic for meeting spend requirements with tax refunds or resale opportunities.

Main topics

• Delta credit card offers and their benefits
• Status matching strategies (United vs. Delta)

Notable quotes

I was really pleasantly surprised the entire phone call... from the time that Capital One Travel picked up.

Conclusion

Delta's enhanced card offers present compelling opportunities for status matching and

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:01) This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Speaker 1 (0:11) This Speaker 2 (0:12) podcast episode is sponsored by Saley. Saley is an eSIM service app created by the security experts behind NordVPN. Instead of paying absurd daily rates to your home carrier or swapping SIM cards on arrival, Saley gives you flexible prepaid data plans in over 200 destinations worldwide. Setup takes just a couple of minutes on your phone before you leave, and your data activates automatically when you touch down. Plus, in order to reduce your data consumption, Saley actually blocks malicious sites, trackers, and annoying ads Speaker 1 (0:42) while you browse. Whether you need a quick gigabyte for a weekend away or unlimited data for a longer adventure, Saley keeps you connected without any surprise bills waiting for you at home. Speaker 2 (0:52) Ready to upgrade your international roaming? Download Saley from your app store and use our code FREQUENTMILER at checkout to get 15 % off your first purchase. Details are in the show notes. Speaker 1 (1:05) In today's episode, we have a wildcard challenge update, including some cool tips for Capital One travel. Greg is considering a United status match, and believe it or not, I'm considering a Delta status match. And we'll discuss the latest huge Delta card offers and how they relate to status matches. Frequent Miler on the air starts now. Speaker 2 (1:29) Today's main event, diving into Delta's huge card offers. We're currently seeing some of the biggest Delta welcome offers that we've ever seen before. And some of them are really interesting. They're not the usual just more miles kind of thing. You've got some twists on things there. And so we're going to talk about the new enhanced offers in today's main event. Speaker 1 (1:57) Yeah, you know, I'm interested in finding out more about what you think about those offers because... There's a reason I'm considering a Delta card for the first time ever. So we'll see. We'll talk about it in a little bit. But before we do that, remember, if you want to jump ahead to that part of the conversation or you want to come back to something, don't forget to expand the show notes to read the description and find the timestamps so you can jump ahead or jump back. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to give this a thumbs up. Give it a like. Hit that like button. Hit the subscribe button. Leave us a review. We appreciate all of that. All right. Let's kick things off today with a wild card challenge update. So what's going on with this? What is the wild card challenge, Greg? Speaker 2 (2:37) Yeah, just real briefly. So as you know, listeners, every year, the Freak of Mylar team makes up a new... challenge, a new game where we challenge each other to make the most of points and miles. And this year, it's the wildcard challenge, where if you listen to a recent episode of the podcast, we actually did a live stream where we randomly picked cards that that defined for us where we need to go, how many points and miles and sort of credit card perks we have. to get there and also some obstacles and power-ups and uh so all of that was so much fun to do for one thing, but it's also, it's made for a really fun game of like, how do we optimize this sort of random collection of assets and obstacles to, to complete the goal. And as we're recording this, we're going to be starting our actual travel next week on Tuesday. Speaker 1 (3:42) What is it? September 22nd. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned optimizing because, you know, we'll have to see who optimizes the most. I like that. That's a, that's already a metric that Greg's throwing out there into the world. So of course, Carrie and, uh, and Steven are judging this. And so we've got a whole page you can go to, to check out the wild card challenge. So we'll have a link in the show notes to that, uh, quick update for me. So as a reminder, I've got capital one miles from the venture card. I've got lots of miles, the Marriott, uh, Marriott Bonvoy points and some cash. Pacific miles as well. So that's my sort of budget. And I have to visit Guadeloupe, Vietnam, and then we're all meeting up in Melbourne, Australia. So I wanted to update with a couple of small tidbits and pieces. A lot of people have pointed out the fact that there is an Air France flight from Miami to, I'm not going to say this right, Pointe du Pitch. which is the capital of Guadeloupe. And in a more perfect world, I would have booked that on Air France for either 9,000 Virgin Atlantic miles, or I think Air France Flying Blue maybe charges 7,000 if I remember correctly. I say if I remember correctly, because I took a free MSC cruise out of Guadeloupe a year or two ago. And so I was familiar with the ways to get there because I had to look into it to get there for that cruise. So that was my first thought also. But unfortunately, that place only operated on Fridays and Saturdays, I think. pointed out we're departing on Tuesday and our first check-in is on a Thursday. So unless I wanted to be there for like five days ahead of the check-in, which is not going to be the case here, I couldn't take that particular flight. There's also Air Canada from Montreal, but again, just operates on the weekends at this time of year. It's hurricane season. So a lot of airlines don't have the same frequency at this time of year that they do at other times of year. In absence of that, I could have just flown to the Caribbean and taken a cheap flight on a low cost carrier. And actually, I feel like maybe I missed the boat here, so to speak, in that I could have flown to St. Martin and switched from one side to the other and gotten that video on Maho Beach. If you're not familiar with Maho Beach, you can give it a Google and you'll see why that would have been a fun place for me to stop. So spoiler alert, I'm not going to be on Maho Beach, but you'll see what I have cooked up pretty soon. Pacific, that seemed like an awesome have there with 38,000 Cathay Pacific miles and some points transferred from Capital One. You would think that I'd pretty easily find business class or at least premium economy from Vietnam to Australia. Spoiler alert, that's not going to be what I'm using in that case. But you'll see what happens during the challenge. You have to keep your eyes peeled for it. None of the above were easily available, unfortunately. All of those things sound great. but they weren't as good. I could have done, like I said, the low-cost carrier thing from another Caribbean island. I didn't want to do that because I really wanted to book carriers that could be booked with miles, something that people could easily replicate and not have to depend on the cash cost of a ticket. So I did not do that. In the real world, though, we drew our cards on September 9th, and all of my flights were booked two days later. On September 11th, I was... all done booking. So believe it or not, this was actually not as hard for me as a lot of people thought that it would be. Part of it is that I didn't want to hesitate. I knew if I hesitated that Greg and Tim would take the flights that I wanted to book. And I couldn't afford to have that happen. So I needed to make sure I jumped on it really quickly. And so a couple of kind of small tidbits for you, a little slice, a little appetizer. I will only be staying in four star or better hotels and more than 40 % of my flight miles will be in premium cabins. So you'll have to watch out to see how I do that. A couple of quick interesting findings that have jumped out at me so far from doing the challenge. Of course, we do these challenges because they lead us to find things that we may not have found otherwise. And so first off, I had success with the Capital One travel price match, and it was surprisingly easy. I found a hotel through Capital One travel. And of course, As part of the current introductory offer on the venture card, there's a Capital One Stays credit at the time we're recording this. And so that's part of my budget for this trip, a Capital One Stays credit of $300. So I found a hotel I wanted to book, but I found it cheaper elsewhere. So I was booking a non-refundable rate, though, because I wanted to use as little as possible. So it was a little bit of a nail biter in the sense that I had to book the non-refundable prepaid rate. first proactively and then call Capital One for the price match and hope that it was going to go through. But I was really pleasantly surprised the entire phone call from the time that Capital One Travel picked up. And when I say picked up, I mean, when the phone tree you have to navigate begins till I got through to an agent. till the price match was done. And I hung up the phone was I think, eight minutes and 16 seconds. Yeah, it was really quick, super easy. The person just took asked me the questions about where I found the better price, how much it was. It was like lickety split, like, okay, great, you've got a credit for a future booking. So really pleasantly surprised with how easy that was. Speaking of Capital One Travel, the other thing that jumped out at me so far is that I found at least in one instance, and I don't know if this is a one-off yet or if this is a pattern because I haven't had the time to dig into it yet, but I will. I noticed a difference, a pretty sizable difference in the rate through the Capital One Travel app on my phone. versus the desktop version of Capital One Travel for the same hotel, same rooms. I looked at a specific place with three different room types, and those three different room types, two of them were... 21 % cheaper in the app than they were on the desktop version of the site. And both non-refundable, it was the same exact booking, looking at the same exact time and both devices. And it was just significantly cheaper in the app. And so I booked through the app and it went through. So it all worked fine. Again, I don't know if that's just a weird one-off or if that's a pattern, but... It's worth checking probably because on the higher end room type, it was a difference of like $75. So it wasn't a small, tiny little difference. It was a pretty significant difference in that case, I thought. So anyway, that's something to be aware of. Last two little things. I had some weirdness with a phantomy award booking, so I look forward to sharing how that got worked out. I went through a booking and I got a confirmation code, but then I kept putting it into the airline website and it said that it wasn't there. And then I checked the account through which I booked it and it showed that I had no bookings, even though I still had the confirmation page up. with the confirmation code. And I tried putting it in on the booking site and didn't work at all. And I had to call the airline, get that one ticketed and worked out. So I look forward to sharing more about that as the challenge goes on. Keep your eyes peeled for some phantomy stuff. And then I just last thing I'm going to mention is that I've got some fun activities lined up. So I'm actually pretty excited about a couple of things I have planned. My trip is like, I would say. 80 % planned at this point. And I feel pretty good about that. A lot of times, you know, at the last minute, I'm trying to figure out the last few things. I feel like I'm pretty, pretty close to done with this one. So that's, Speaker 2 (10:56) that's Speaker 1 (10:56) amazing. I Speaker 2 (10:57) am nowhere near that. All right, let me get my update. So as background, what I drew was I have a bunch of Delta miles, a bunch of Amex membership rewards points. I have a bunch of Marriott points, and I have a handful of American Airlines miles. That's my budget. I need to get to Panama, Colombia, and then Melbourne, Australia, as does everybody. Last week. I complained, I guess, that I had bungled my use of my power up by picking to stay in the Central America region by going from Panama to Colombia rather than Panama to China, which was my original pick. Once I started actually searching for award flights and everything, though, I realized actually it was great. it turned out to be, believe it or not, kind of too easy. My first- Oh, I believe it, Greg. I believe it. You believe it, yeah. Yeah, I don't have to go to Guadalupe. Let me get back to the too easy part. So, you know, the first thought about going from Central America to I mean, Australia or New Zealand, is that there are a few ways using Delta miles to get from South America to down under. And so, you know, my thought was I would go from. uh colombia to more southern uh south america and then fly across but um so what i was looking at is china eastern which is a sky team airline um flies from buenos aires to uh to auckland and then i could you know take a cheap flight maybe from auckland to melbourne um latam has flights from santiago chile to melbourne sydney and auckland So, and both of those airlines are bookable with Delta miles. So theoretically I could have used my miles for that. But there was no, no award availability on any of these routes for the dates I needed or even close to the dates I needed. And I don't mean no business class, no premium economy. I mean, no awards face. Like you could not fly economy. you know, in the toilet, in the back of the plane with miles on these, unless I somehow had laton miles, but then even those, it was asking way too many for any credible way of doing it. So, yeah, so that was the situation. So I, you know, I gave up on that route, but even without you know, looking for that route through South America, I found easy ways to get to Australia. But I wanted to do something really clever with my miles. And I had a plan. I had the perfect plan of how to do something really cool, get business class flights really cheap for, you know, about half the trip. And There was award space available in business class that I could have done, but the obstacle card I picked was that I'm a night owl and I'm not allowed to pick flights, book flights that depart before 10 a.m. And the awards that I needed were, the awards that were available were before 10 a.m. I could not do that trick. Yeah, it really hurt. So I'm going to write up the trick on the blog soon. But here's the, I guess the good news is that it didn't really matter. Like it was a clever trick, but my path is so relatively easy. I didn't even have to do that trick to complete it all, to book everything. That said, that said, I was bored. With my initial plan for how I would fly from point A to point B, there were like no good tricks involved. And so I found another option that is so far out there from anything I considered before and probably anything anyone would have considered for me before. And I figured out how to make it work. So I kind of threw all my cards up in the air and said, I'm starting over with this plan, doing it differently. And you're going to have to wait. until sort of midway through my trip to see what it was that I did. Because the beginning of the trip is the same. And I think people will be intrigued about the whole thing. So looking forward to that. Where I am overall, so I have my flights booked. I only have one hotel booked so far. And not a single activity planned yet. I have a solid idea about one of them, but I'm not quite to that stage yet. Speaker 1 (16:17) All right. So you got some more work to do over the weekend. And so if, if you have some help for Greg, the frequent miler, then you could probably comment on the podcast or we'll each have journal posts going up over the next few days. Hopefully as you hear this, where you can chime in with your tips and things also. And, you know, I said that I have a lot of my stuff planned out, but I, I haven't made final decisions on. I've got more things that I could do than I do time in at least one of my destinations. So I'm certainly interested in recommendations, particularly food recommendations, actually, because that I have not dug into yet, where I'm going to eat. And that's important. So anyway, I hopefully will get some help with that once I get my journal post up so you can see exactly where I'm going to be and what I'm going to be doing. But yeah, this is actually going to work out well. I don't know about you, Greg. I mean, I imagine you're going to have plenty of time in your destination since they're so close together. I'm going to have more than 24 hours in both of my destinations before Melbourne. And then I don't know if I'm getting there first, but I know I'm not getting there last. So it's good. And I'll compete for getting to Melbourne first, I think. Maybe I'll be a little behind, Craig. Speaker 2 (17:31) Yeah, I made it so that I would have at least a full day, meaning I sleep in a hotel and then have a full day and then sleep in a hotel at each destination. Nice. Yeah, so it should be a very comfortable trip, actually. Whether I can get in enough really interesting activities to make it exciting, we'll see. I think the award booking part, especially for the second half of the trip, a lot of people will be very interested in. Nice, nice. generate a lot of maybe even controversy about what I did. Oh, Speaker 1 (18:04) okay. I'm excited. I love a little controversy. All right. Sounds good. I am not going to say that my trip's going to be comfortable. Speaker 2 (18:12) I won't lie to you like that audience. Speaker 1 (18:15) I won't, but it'll be fun, hopefully. All right. So let's move into this week's giant. Oh, by the way. So again, you can go to frequentmiler.com and you'll see a banner at the top that has a link to all the wildcard stuff. So as the thing progresses, you'll want to to keep an eye out there so you can also join us for our live streams because there are two live streams during the challenge if you haven't been following along yet so definitely check that out just go to frequentmiler.com and you'll see a link right at the top of the page to the wild card challenge stuff okay now let's drag out this week's giant mailbag all Speaker 2 (18:47) right this week's giant mail comes from patrick and i'm gonna start by saying that patrick's message is um meant to be in jest mostly, because it's going to sound strange from the beginning. So Patrick writes, I feel like my family is under attack from Amex. Amex membership rewards is already by far our largest transferable points balance, mostly from years of heavy spend in one business. Recently, I opened a business platinum for a different business and quickly earned the 300,000 point welcome bonus. Now I have another large expense coming up and Amex is targeting me with another 300,000 point business platinum offer. Meanwhile, my wife, who already has a platinum, just received a 100,000 point gold card mailer and a 75,000 blue business plus offer. Even better, it looks like my 40k referral still triggers her 100k gold offer. And to add to our first world problems, her 45k platinum referral is showing me a 175k personal platinum welcome offer. So the question, do we make hay while the Amex sun is shining? Or are we crazy to keep piling into a