382 Delta Award Routes That You Can Book for Just 7,500 Points

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Delta SkyMiles can be a frustrating program. Sure, some domestic Delta economy awards can only cost a few thousand SkyMiles. Other times award rates can climb astronomically high. Without an official Delta award chart, there's no telling what the award price will be until you search.

However, travelers have a way to get predictable award pricing on Delta flights — and that's by booking awards through Delta's partners. One of the best options for booking domestic Delta awards is through Virgin Atlantic Flying Club. As part of a 2021 devaluation gutting many Delta sweet spots, Virgin Atlantic threw travelers a bone. Short domestic nonstop Delta routes were reduced to as few as 7,500 points.

Let's dive into this particular sweet spot and show you 382 Delta routes you can book for just 7,500 Virgin points. Plus, we'll review the many ways that U.S. travelers can generate Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points.

Virgin Atlantic Award Chart for Delta Flights

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club prices most Delta award flights by distance. The only exception to this is for Delta flights to the United Kingdom and mainland Europe — which are zone-based instead. For all other Delta flights, the award price depends solely on the distance of each flight sector you fly.

Unfortunately, that arrangement means you'll have to effectively pay for two awards if you book a connecting flight. That means Flying Club is generally only the best option for nonstop Delta flights.

Here's the full Virgin Atlantic Flying Club award chart for Delta flights:

A few takeaways from reviewing this chart:

• Flights under 1,000 miles in distance are where the best value is found.
• Flights up to 2,000 miles in distance can potentially be useful, depending on your other options.
• Delta business- and first-class awards are extremely expensive — particularly on flights longer than 1,000 miles.

So, let's narrow in on that small window of opportunity: Short-haul Delta domestic flights.

List of Delta Award Routes Available for 7,500 Virgin Points

AwardWallet searches found that Delta operates at least 382 routes — and potentially even more — that you can book for just 7,500 Virgin points each way. Here are all of the routes where we found this award pricing:

The table can be filtered and/or sorted to find the routes most relevant for you. Flight times can vary. The flight time provided is the longest option in the data analyzed.

Note that this isn't a comprehensive list. Delta may operate other flights under 500 miles that may price at 7,500 Virgin points. However, not all routes can be booked through Virgin Atlantic's website — as some airports can't be selected in the award search process. So, those routes won't be included in the above chart. On the flip side, keep in mind that some routes may be operated seasonally or may have been discontinued.

A close look at the chart will show that some routes slightly over 500 miles in distance price at 7,500 Virgin points. For example, Detroit (DTW) to New York Kennedy (JFK) is approximately 506 miles (509 miles per Great Circle Mapper). However, this route still prices at 7,500 Virgin points in economy or 17,500 Virgin points in first class:

Oh, and for what it's worth, this same award flight currently costs 26,500 Delta SkyMiles in economy (253% more than Flying Club's pricing) or 34,000 SkyMiles in first class (94% more than Flying Club's pricing):

Finding Delta Award Availability

The biggest “catch” to this sweet spot is Delta partner award availability. In short, Delta needs to release award availability to partners for a flight to be bookable at this rate, and Delta certainly doesn't do so on all flights.

Thankfully Virgin Atlantic recently expanded a tool that travelers can use as a shortcut to finding when flights are available. The Virgin Atlantic Reward Seat Calendar is only designed to show Delta award availability on routes to/from the United Kingdom. However, you can trick it into showing award availability on any route just by tweaking the URL.

For example, here are the search results from Atlanta to Tampa for August 2023 — one of the Delta award flights that can be booked for 7,500 Virgin points:

Once you find a date that works for you, click the “book my reward flight” button to start the award search process.

How to Get Virgin Atlantic Points

Need Virgin Atlantic points to take advantage of this sweet spot? That's probably easier than you might expect. Sure, you can accumulate Virgin points by flying Virgin Atlantic or its SkyTeam partners. But the much easier way is by transferring points from one of the many transferrable point programs that partner with Virgin Atlantic:

• American Express Membership Rewards: 1:1 transfer rate; most transfers process immediately; check here to see if there's a transfer bonus from Amex to Virgin Atlantic
• Capital One Rewards (via Virgin Red): 1:1 transfer rate; most transfers process immediately
• Chase Ultimate Rewards: 1:1 transfer rate; most transfers process immediately; check here to see if there's a transfer bonus from Chase to Virgin Atlantic
• Citi ThankYou Points: 1:1 transfer rate; most transfers process immediately; check here to see if there's a transfer bonus from Citi to Virgin Atlantic
• Bilt Rewards: 1:1 transfer rate; unknown transfer times
• Marriott Bonvoy: 3:1 transfer rate; unknown transfer times

That means you can accumulate points that transfer to Virgin Atlantic by getting any of the following cards:

• American Express^® Green Card: Earn 40,000 Membership Rewards^® Points
• American Express^® Gold Card: Earn 60,000 Membership Rewards^® Points
• Chase Sapphire Preferred^® Card: Earn 60,000 bonus points
• Citi Premier^® Card: Earn 60,000 bonus ThankYou^® Points

U.S. travelers can also earn Virgin points directly using the Virgin Atlantic^® World Elite MasterCard^®.

As a last resort, you can buy Virgin Atlantic points. The standard price is 2.5 cents per point. At that rate, you'll pay around $188 per 7,500-point Delta award flight. However, Flying Club will sometimes offer a promotion to buy Virgin points with up to a 70% bonus. That drops the mileage price of booking a short Delta award flight to just $111. Depending on the route, this could be a much cheaper way to buy a flight than paying cash for the ticket. Just make sure that there's award availability before purchasing points.

Bottom Line

Virgin Atlantic Flying Club offers an appealing 7,500-point rate for Delta flights under 500 miles. That may not sound very far, but it can be useful when the drive between two cities makes it worth flying. Of the 382 Delta routes pricing at 7,500 Virgin points, 96 routes are over 400 miles, and several of these routes connect cities that would take more than eight hours to drive between.

While we focused on sub-500-mile routes in this post, remember that Delta award flights between 501-1,000 miles can be booked for just 8,500 Virgin points. This distance band includes even more appealing routes like Atlanta to Cancun, Mexico or to Nassau, Bahamas.

To shortcut the process of finding the cheapest booking option for a particular award, you can use a tool like Point.me — or newer competitors like Roame.Travel and PointsYeah — to do the work for you. Each will search for award availability for your date and then try to determine the cheapest way to book it.

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