While I have been living under a rock the past few weeks preparing to put my house of 10 years on the market, Delta came out with a new feature announcement last week that may be of interest to frequent Delta flyers. The announcement is that you can now upgrade your flights at the time of booking using your frequent flyer miles. Previously you were only able to do this using cash.
This is only for domestic flights in the 50 US states (including Alaska and Hawaii).
When you upgrade using your points, your points will be worth 1 cent per point. In the example given by Delta below, they show someone spending 26,200 miles to upgrade to first class instead of paying $262.00 for the privilege to upgrade each way.
Before you jump at this opportunity, please make note that this is almost always a terrible use of miles. In this scenario, you would be paying cash for the flight in economy + an additional 52,400 miles to get a first class ticket. If you want to fly first class this bad and burn your miles, you might as well just book into first class directly as an award. Worst case scenario, that would cost you 100,000 miles as a peak award. You might even be able to book a saver first class award for 50,000 miles a ticket.
For everyone else, this is not the best use of your miles. The only reason why I would even consider this is if the first class ticket were only $100 more than coach. However in that case I would probably just spend the cash to get the ticket and take advantage of the mileage bonus for booking directly.
