Frequent fliers of Delta Airlines have a choice of various American Express Delta Skymiles credit card, the gold version, the platinum version and the Delta Reserve Card. In this post, I’m going to compare the three cards side by to help you choose the most appropriate one for yourself. Below is a table comparing the three cards.

Card Image
Card	Gold Delta SkyMiles® Business Card from American Express OPEN	Platinum Delta SkyMiles Credit Card	Delta Reserve Credit Card
Miles Formula	2 miles/$1	2 miles/$1	2 miles/$1
Caps on Miles	Earn Unlimited Miles	100,000 – after that you earn miles at a rate of 1 mile/$2	Earn Unlimited Miles
Companion Ticket	Complimentary $99 Companion Certificate upon renewal	Complimentary companion Coach Class ticket each year upon renewal	Free* domestic companion certificate, which can be used for a First-Class or Coach-Class ticket.
Bonus	20,000 plus additional 2,500 if you add another card member (up to 2)	Earn 20,000 bonus miles with your first purchase, 5,000 of which are Medallion® Qualification Miles.	Earn up to 10,000 Medallion Qualification Miles (MQMs) with your first purchase
Medallion Miles	n.a.	10,000 Medallion Miles if you spend $25,000 on card and another $10,000 when you spend $50,000	Spend $30,000 in a calendar year and you can earn a Miles BoostSM of 15,000 MQMs. Spend $60,000 in that same year and you can earn an additional 15,000 MQMs.
Delta Crown Room Access	No	No	Yes
Gift of MQMs	No	No	Yes
Pay with Miles Option	Yes	Yes	Yes
Concierge Service	No	No	Yes
Annual Fee	$90	$150	$450

Observations – Glancing across the three cards, the thing that I liked about all of them is that you can earn double miles. All three cards allow you to pay your delta tickets with miles and all offer some form of companion tickets. As you move from gold to platinum to the reserve card, the benefits go up tremendously. Let’s look at each of them.

Companion Ticket – At the gold level, companion ticket starts at a $99 value that you get every year upon your anniversary. But as you progress up to the Reserve Card, it gets better and you can get companion tickets even for first class tickets.

Bonus Miles and MQMs – Skymile members will know that the true value of being a Delta frequent flier is earning Medallion Qualifying Miles (MQMs) to get elite status. Privileges at the highest levels include automatic first class upgrades which is so precious to frequent fliers. With the Gold Card, new cardholders get some bonus miles, but none of them are MQMs. Only Platinum and Reserve Card holders get MQMs as sign up bonuses.

For those who spend up to $60,000 a year, the Delta Reserve Card will let you get an extra 30,000 MQMs, while the Platinum Card allows you to earn an additional 20,000 MQMs if you spend up to $50,000 a year on the card.

Extra Perks for Delta Reserve Card – The Delta Reserve Card has some perks which the Platinum and Gold Card do not have. Firstly, they have access to 24/7 concierge service. But more importantly, they can access the Delta Crown at anytime. This is valuable because depending on your status, it cost at least $330 a year to get a Delta Crown Room pass (see table below).

Delta Reserve Card holders can also give their MQMs to friends and family members, thus helping them to reach their elite status qualifying target.

Verdict – For the serious and frequent flier of Delta Airlines who charges a lot on their credit card, I would recommend that they go straight for the Delta Reserve Credit Card. It does have a $450 annual fee. But having access to the Delta Crown Room and using first class companion tickets alone will more than adequately cover the annual fee. What is more important is the ability to earn extra MQMs if you use your card (see table above). Another important feature is that you get standby and upgrade priority within your membership tier. If there is one seat left in first, and there are two Platinum Medallions waiting for it, the one with this card gets it.

If you find that the fees and benefits of the Delta Reserve Credit Card not to your likely, I would consider the Gold Delta Skymiles® Business Card from American Express OPEN because as part of the OPEN network, you get additional discounts with their merchants as well.

For those who do not charge more than $50,000 a year on the card and are not serial fliers, the Platinum version probably makes the most sense.

For members of Skymiles who are not really frequent fliers and perhaps have a couple of other programs under their belts, I would recommend forgetting about the Gold card and instead get the starwood credit card instead. The reason is that the Starwood Preferred Guest program allows you to transfer points into Delta Skymiles at a 1 for 1 ratio (see screenshot below). Furthermore, if you transfer 20,000 points, you get 5,000 bonus miles! Plus the annual fee is only $45, half that of the Gold version.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 14th, 2009 at 07:24 and is filed under Credit Cards FAQ. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.