Delta and American Express offer 15% off all award flights

Delta and American Express have recently announced a new benefit for cardholders of the various Delta American Express personal and business credit cards. You can use code TakeOff15 to save 15% off of Delta award flights booked with Sky Miles.

Delta American Express Credit Card Offers

Here are the current offers for the 5 Delta American Express cards. While they are not the absolute highest offers we have ever seen, they are at the high end, so if you’re looking to get a Delta American Express, now isn’t a bad time to do it.

• American Express Delta Gold card – 70,000 Skymiles after spending $2,000 in the first 3 months. $0 annual fee the first year, then $99
• American Express Delta Gold business card – 75,000 Skymiles after spending $3,000 in the first 3 months. $0 annual fee the first year, then $99
• American Express Delta Platinum card – 90,000 Skymiles after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months. $250 annual fee
• American Express Delta Platinum business card – 90,000 Skymiles after spending $4,000 in the first 3 months. $250 annual fee
• American Express Delta Reserve card – 95,000 Skymiles after spending $6,000 in the first 3 months. $550 annual fee

You can find all of these offers on our top credit card offers page. They are under either the airline cards or business cards section

Delta American Express TakeOff15 benefit

If you look at the terms, conditions and additional benefits of any of the Delta American Express cards above, you’ll see that they have a new section:

• New: Card Members get 15% off when using miles to book Award Travel on Delta flights through delta.com and the Fly Delta app. Discount not applicable to partner-operated flights or to taxes and fees.

So if you are a cardholder, and looking to book a Delta award flight, you can get 15% off your redemption rate. As the fine print mentions, this won’t work on partner flights and won’t help you save money on taxes and fees.

Still, if you’re planning on making any significant Delta redemptions, you would almost have to have a Delta card if you wanted to maximize your Sky Miles. I’m sure this was the thinking by the marketing folks when they introduced this benefit. A 100,000 mile redemption would only cost you 85,000 miles, a 15,000 mile savings. I haven’t been able to see any sort of maximum benefit associated with the TakeOff15 promotion, and with the rising cost of Delta flights, that could be important!

The Bottom Line

Cardholders of the 5 Delta American Express cards now have access to TakeOff15, a promotion code that allows them to save 15% off the cost of non-partner Delta award flights. If you are planning on redeeming Delta miles in the near future, you should at least consider signing up for a Delta American Express card if you don’t have one already. And the good news is that the signup bonuses are currently at relatively high levels.

What do you think of the new TakeOff15 Delta American Express benefit? Ingenious marketing or evil ploy?