Another card in our arsenal is the Delta Skymiles Platinum Card. Brandon opened this card in 2021 when we planned on going to Italy.
At the time, the card had a 75,000-mile sign-up bonus that we used to get flights to Rome, Italy. This was our first time using points to cover a flight, and it felt terrific only to spend about $25 in fees to go on an international adventure.
This might actually be where my addiction to travel hacking beings…
Initially, the $250 annual fee can seem quite daunting, but if you utilize the card’s perks, the annual fee can quickly be negated. Let me explain.
The Annual Companion Certificate
Each year the cardholder will receive one annual companion certificate for a round-trip flight within the 48 contiguous states in the main cabin. So sadly, no trips to Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, or the USVI, but we still got 48 states to work with!
So, you can easily find a destination you have wanted to go to but may have been out of your budget for two people, and now you can get a two-for-one deal!
And if this flight is more than 250 dollars, you have negated the annual fee. Of course, you don’t want to spend extra money on flights you could get with a cheaper carrier, but you can find competitive flight prices with Delta Main Cabin.
Brandon and I are traveling to Los Angeles this summer, and tickets with Delta are about $600 round trip per person. Spirit did have round-trip tickets for $300 per person. But, the flight to Los Angeles was just a stop on our way to Fiji(!!!), so we did not want to risk a flight with all the issues Spirit had been having.
And we would have spent $600 for both of us on Spirit, so instead, we spent $600 for both of us on Delta using the companion pass.
So, we used our companion pass to cover the additional ticket fee, saving us $600 on a Delta flight, offsetting the annual fee.
First Checked Bag Free
Another perk this card has is allowing the first checked bag to be free. This could save you $60 for every round-trip ticket you have.
Most of the time, when we travel, we only travel with carry-on bags, but there have been a few times when we needed to check our bags.
Seeing the checked bag price go from 60 to 0 dollars always makes me smile.
If you just wanted to use this perk, if you checked your first bag for five flights throughout the year, you will get your monies worth! It is a simple perk but very beneficial.
Overall
Overall, we enjoy having this card and being able to offset the annual fee with the companion pass, and the free checked bag makes this card a win for us.
If the card starts to not make sense for us and we cannot offset the annual, then you can downgrade to the Delta SkyMiles Gold Card with a yearly fee of $99 or cancel the card altogether.
