Every Monday the Air Miles website usually posts new travel specials for Air Canada and WestJet. Today there was something new – a Delta Airlines $50 USD travel credit voucher for 250 air miles. This is a great value per mile. However, there are a few reasons why anyone from the Maritimes might want to take a pass on this one.
In the past, Delta flew Halifax to New York year round (initially they flew to LaGuardia but more recently to JFK). I see from the Halifax Airport website this route is now “summer season”. The last flight appears to be September 30th. In the “Overview” on the Air Miles page for the promo it states that “your unique Certificate Number and Delta Redemption Code will be mailed within 3 weeks”. The voucher expires June 15, 2017. I don’t see any Delta flights from Halifax currently scheduled in 2017.
It is possible to book Delta flights out of Maritime airports that include segments on WestJet. However, in the limited searching I did I could not find any such Delta fare that wasn’t already $50 more than the lowest alternative.
Although there is a box to set the quantity of vouchers you’d like, when you add it to the cart you’ll see that it’s only possible to redeem miles for one voucher. Also, the terms and conditions seem to indicate that only one voucher may be used per person. I suppose a way around that might be to book two one-ways if you had vouchers redeemed from two Air Miles accounts.
At first glance this seemed like a terrific redemption opportunity, but on further review, it’s not so great. At the moment there are a few low fares on Delta non-stop Halifax to JFK in late August and September. However, if it takes some time to receive the voucher, they may be gone by then and the United non-stop to Newark might be cheapest. But if you want to gamble, and the fares work in your favour, you could end up with a cheap flight to New York and a great return for your air miles.
Hopefully a similar redemption opportunity will come along for a different airline.
Leave a Reply