Flying a lie-flat Delta seat to Europe is an excellent experience, regardless of whether you get a luxurious Delta One suite with a closing door or any other Delta business class seat. One thing only: Making it inexpensively.
If you want to travel in business class on Delta, it may get very expensive, whether you’re paying $4,000 or more or more than 300,000 SkyMiles per way. However, there’s a more superior method: You can book these very same Delta One flights to Europe for just 50,000 points each way, or sometimes even less, with the help of Virgin Atlantic, one of Delta’s partner airlines!
It may be more difficult to use this workaround to book Delta One tickets to Europe because it depends on being able to locate award availability through Virgin. albeit there have recently been a few open slots to reserve it. Furthermore, obtaining the necessary Virgin points is significantly simpler even though you cannot convert your Delta SkyMiles to Virgin’s mileage plan: The American Express® Gold Card, Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card, and Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card all provide points, so you have what you need.
It’s just among the greatest offers available in the points and miles marketplace. And we will demonstrate to you how to get a cheap Delta One business-class reservation.
Fly Delta One using your Virgin Atlantic points
Our motto is: If Delta is charging a fortune, consider Virgin Atlantic. Our preferred method for booking Delta flights and earning significant SkyMiles is through Virgin Atlantic’s frequent flyer program. Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points can be easily redeemed for flights on Delta aircraft because of the two airlines’ tight connection.
When adopting this workaround on several Delta flights, you can save a ton of SkyMiles, regardless of whether you’re on a quick local travel or a lengthy international one. If you want to travel to Europe in business class, however, the discounts can be very amazing. It is not rare for Delta to charge 200,000, 250,000, 350,000, or even more SkyMiles for a single Delta One journey to Europe.
Locate & Reserve Delta One for $50,000
The difficult phase is about to begin. Luckily, it looks like this transaction is becoming easier to pull off. Virgin Atlantic offers much more consistent reward costs than Delta, whose SkyMiles award values tend to fluctuate wildly. Every time you take a Delta flight from the United States to Europe, you’ll earn 30,000 Flying Club miles in one go. There will always be 50,000 miles on that same flight with Delta One.
The challenge lies in determining the award’s availability at that cost. Either it exists or it isn’t accessible at all. Furthermore, there’s no set schedule for when a Virgin Atlantic Delta reward seat becomes available. It has been difficult to locate these Delta One awards that have been offered for 50,000 points via Virgin Atlantic for the past few years.
But now, the floodgates opened. We’ve given multiple award alerts with wide-open award space to book Delta One business class through Virgin for a great price to Thrifty Traveler Premium members in just the last few months.
Filtering for Delta One Business Class
A few months ago, for instance, we discovered an extremely uncommon opportunity to travel with seats for up to nine people in early 2024 to Frankfurt (FRA), Brussels (BRU), or Zurich (ZRH). This incredible deal has not materialized again for almost a year. It was much less expensive at the time thanks to a 30% transfer incentive from Chase.
We also discovered that booking Delta One for 50,000 points was widely available for those considering a vacation to Europe this winter or spring. These itineraries included Detroit (DTW) to Frankfurt (FRA), Minneapolis-St. Paul (MSP) to Amsterdam (AMS), Boston (BOS) to Lisbon (LIS) or Dublin (DUB), and many more.
Trial and error is required whether you’re starting from scratch or trying to get seats on another Delta aircraft. and a lot of it in some situations. Since you eventually want to redeem your Virgin Atlantic points, you should start your search there even if your goal is to fly Delta. Enter a one-way nonstop Delta route to Europe and run a flight search for Upper Class.
The search engine regularly fails to identify airports that aren’t part of Virgin’s route network, making it challenging to retrieve the routes you desire. Occasionally, selecting your target airport by hand will need you to click “See full airport list.” If you encounter mistakes, don’t give up: It simply indicates that during the week you searched, nothing was found. Until at least one flight appears, try rearranging your search to a different week or even alternative routes.
Unfortunately, by eliminating the option to view a pricing calendar that spans a month, Virgin Atlantic made it more difficult to focus on the best offers. But fear not—there’s a backdoor to access that. Simply enter the necessary information into the URL and begin browsing the calendar to identify the flights that are convenient for you. To ensure that you only get results in Delta One business class and not the expensive (and heavily taxed) connecting flights on Virgin Atlantic, make sure to filter for nonstop flights.
Finding a suitable date can be challenging as you have to go through several months’ worth of flights. Find the dates that work for you by being flexible, or simply wait for a Thrifty Traveler Premium award alert to notify you. However, it’s certainly worth it to fly across the pond in business class on Delta One for just $5.60 and 50,000 points.