Delta Companion Certificate

For the past 10 years I average over $150k per year on my AmX Delta Platinum card.

I love my free first class tickets for the family ski trips or Canada or Hawaii. Yet every year they send me a free Delta Platinum SkyMles Credit Card Companion Certificate for free travel for a companion if I book a U, T or L class ticket.

I have never used this certificate....has anyone else used them...any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Have wondered the same thing...somehow they never get used..eager to see other responses to this.
Connie

We have only used them once in all the years for a trip down to my son's college. The odd thing was we had to go to pick them up at the airport rather than on line and eticket or mailed. It was not that easy to use. Doug

When I regularly flew DL, having to drive a couple of hours to the airport to do things like use a bump voucher or reuse a cancelled ticket was highly annoying.

I also get the companion certs, but have never used them. For one thing they are limited to domestic travel, and most of my flights are international.
If they included trans-Atlantic travel, I would probably have found a way to use them.

wrxdoug said:

We have only used them once in all the years for a trip down to my son's college. The odd thing was we had to go to pick them up at the airport rather than on line and eticket or mailed. It was not that easy to use. Doug

Click to expand...

I've gotten them at for at least 7+ years, and have used them twice. Delta keeps changing the terms of usage. I don't know whether it's to improve usage, or dissuade it:

- several years ago, it was based on minimum ticket prices - I think $328 for domestic, and possibly $588 for international (I seem to remember int'l tickets once being available)
- last year (maybe the year before), it was a zone fare: from $218 (+ taxes/fees) for travel within your zone, to $398 cross country
- currently it is based on fare codes, as Bill mentioned, L/U/T

I liked the 2nd one the best. I used it for travel to Key West, which normally is pretty expensive, but because it's considered part of the SouthEast/Florida zone, was only $278. I think all totalled it was about $330 for 2 tickets, it's uncommon to even see 1 ticket at that price.

If I was smarter I'd probably just cancel my DL AMEX Platinum card, even if I used the companion voucher regularly, by the time you add in the cost of the annual fee for the card, and the expense of going to the airport to get it ticketed, I'm not sure there's really any savings.

Jeff

You have to go to the airport? bummer... I just decided I'd upgrade to this for the companion ticket since we seem to use the ones we get with Alaska every year. We used to have to go to the airport to pick them up with Alaska which was a major pain, but last year they made them available online and they are much easier to use. Can't Delta figure out how to do this too? I may be sorry I paid the extra fee now

we are planning to use it for the first time for our Manhattan club trip during spring break. Will save hopefully about $250 for the kid's fare. This makes the decision between drive, fly or train easy.

Airport real negative

Having to go to the airport within 1 day of making reservations is a real negative.

If I remember correctly the coupon says something about travel agent.

Has anyone used a travel agent? My travel agent charges to make air reservations but it would be worth it in this case if I did not have to drive to LAX.

Short