You may recall a teaser tweet I sent out last week about some good changes to the Delta SkyMiles® World MasterCard® from Capital One. Well Cap One has given us the go ahead to release the details as existing cardholders should be receiving the information this week. To put it bluntly, this is the first Airline Card or as some may call it a Frequent Flyer Credit Card to offer 2 Miles per dollar on all spending. You may say that other cards offer 2 Miles per dollar but you have to compare apples to apples and when it comes to Frequent Flyer programs you have to compare this only to cards like the CIBC Aerogold Visa’s, RBC BA and Cathay Pacific Cards, WestJet MasterCards and a few others. The card that comes the closest is actually a hybrid card, the American Express Gold Rewards card which offers 2 points per dollar on Gas, Grocery, Drug Store and Travel Purchases which translates to 2 Aeroplan Miles or British Airway Avios Points. Not only does this card earn 2 SkyMiles per dollar on all spending, it also earns 3 Delta miles for every $1 you spend on Delta purchases making this card even better for those SkyMiles members who do or don’t have this card.
The card retains a 25,000 SkyMiles sign up bonus but the annual renewal bonus of 2,500 miles is increased to 10,000 miles if the cardholder spends $25,000 on the card annually. Other than that the card remains the same with its extremely strong suite of insurance and warranty benefits.
Related Post: Delta SkyMiles® World MasterCard® from Capital One Review
The beauty in this is that SkyMiles don’t have to be redeemed on Delta flights only, they can be used on Delta’s partners from the SkyTeam alliance, many of which serve Canada directly. SkyTeam is in fact the second largest alliance in Canada after the Star Alliance in terms of the number of cities served. Delta’s SkyTeam partners include Aeroflot (Toronto), Air France (Montreal/Toronto), Alitalia (Toronto), KLM (Calgary, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver) Korean Air (Toronto, Vancouver), and China Airlines, China Eastern, China Southern (Vancouver). You can also redeem on non SkyTeam airlines that serve Canada such as Alaska Airlines (Alberta, BC) and Jet Airways (Toronto). Finally, Delta recently teamed up with WestJet and they codeshare on select routes in Canada and from Canada to the U.S. and at some point you should be able to redeem your SkyMiles for a Delta Coded WestJet flight. For the time being you can only earn SkyMiles on the select Delta coded WestJet flights.
The downside however of a frequent flyer program are the restrictions and lack of availability that usually come along with the program and Delta SkyMiles is no stranger in this department. In fact, many frequent flyers, bloggers and even some studies tend to place SkyMiles towards the bottom in terms of ticket availability at the lowest redemption rate. Now, everyone has different experiences with frequent flyer programs and while one person may say SkyMiles is at the bottom another will place it right at the top. As I have I stated before, the key to a frequent flyer program is to allow for some flexibility in routing, dates and times of award tickets. If you go in totally inflexible chances are you will be disappointed.
Overall I think these changes are nothing but good as Capital One has not pulled anything away from this card and are only upping the ante with the increased mileage earning and renewal bonus. The big question that will arise from this is whether other card issuers will take note and up their offerings if people start moving to this card.
With the updated Delta SkyMiles® World MasterCard® from Capital One® Canada the customer will get:
- Earn Delta miles on everything you buy
- A
welcome bonus of up to 25,000 Delta miles - Earn 3 Delta miles for every $1 you spend on Delta purchases
- 2 miles for every $1 on all other net purchases
- Plus, get 10,000 annual bonus Delta miles when you spend at least $25,000 each year
- Valuable World MasterCard benefits:
- Travel Emergency Medical Insurance
- Trip Cancellation Insurance
Please Note: A requirement of this card is a minimum personal income of $60,000 or household income of $100,000.
There is a $120 annual membership fee with this product and an annual interest rate of 19.8%.
To apply for the Delta SkyMiles® World MasterCard® please visit Capital One
“The
interest rates, fees, rewards details, benefits and other details of
the Capital One product(s) described in the article may have changed
since the time of publication. Please consult the product information
pages on the Capital One website for accurate product details. In the
event of any conflict between the product details in this article and
the Capital One website, the details on the Capital One website shall
prevail.”
—