Earn Skymiles (Delta Airlines) by Flying Westjet
Starting January 1, 2014, you can earn Skymiles by flying Westjet. If the ticket is sold by Westjet, you can still credit the miles to Skymiles – the flight doesn’t have to be ticketed by Delta (006 ticket stock) to be eligible for mile accrual. However, no matter how your Westjet flight is ticketed, you will not be eligible for either Medallion Qualification Miles (MQM), or for our friends down South, Medallion Qualification Dollars (MQD). Further, you will not get a Medallion tier bonus for those miles.
Here is the accrual chart for Westjet:
I think this is a great opportunity for Canadian flyers. Westjet’s frequent flyer program is a “Dollars” program, whereas Delta Skymiles is an award redemption program. Skymiles allows for more aspirational awards than Westjet does – my favourite being redeeming on Virgin Australia Business Class for relatively cheap.
Interesting. Perhaps for the benefit of your audience, can you elaborate the redemption sweet spots for Canadians where this would be worthwhile? redeeming on Virgin Australia Business Class for relatively cheap? I think there is a stigma associated with Delta SkyPesos 🙂
Sure. You can redeem Delta Skymiles on VA for 160k r/t business class, with no fuel surcharges. VA has some awesome connections to hard-to-get-to places with good award availability. Further, you can credit your award flight to Virgin Australia Velocity and get full J mileage (http://dcta.ca/2014/06/get-virgin-australia-status-with-delta-award-ticket/) — a pretty darn good rebate on your miles.
I find there’s good award availability on VA and it’s an awesome experience (especially if you can get Row 5 as a couple).
Yeah, Skymiles sucks for DL Metal, but if you know how to look, there’s good availability on partner airlines.
One can already earn AAdvantage miles on WestJet at 100% earnings. Much better than Skypesos too IMO.
http://www.aa.com/i18n/AAdvantage/earnMiles/travel/airlines/westjet.jsp
Hopefully, this will last.