American Express Platinum cardholders will no longer receive a 20% discount on Delta Private Jets starting 8/31/21. I suspect this wasn’t a benefit that was used often, but this is part of the Platinum benefit changes that I hadn’t seen discussed.
Hat tip to reader John
I actually looked into their “stand-by” program once. I remember it being kind of interesting.. but in the “I’m a solo leisure traveler doing it for the Gram” kind of way. Something like $8k upfront, then you could jump in to open seats on already chartered flights for a couple hundred bucks. They were hard to find and often went between airports that don’t have commercial service making it pretty tough to catch one without considerable effort, and cost.
Well this is unfortunate.
How much does one of these trips actually cost? Like a 3 hour domestic flight
Did the math once on a four-hour domestic one way, which came out to around $18k with seating for eight. It varied greatly depending on the day, whether someone else is booking a flight from your destination, etc. I could see cases where you could fly a high-paid team direct to and from same day, avoiding connections and hotels and saving billable hours, that it might make sense, but otherwise it’s paying trans-Pacific first class prices for domestic, best case.
Depends on a lot of factors – most importantly the size of the jet, how far in advance you book, and the demand on that particular day. For a 3 hour domestic flight it could be as little as $14k-$20k on a light jet for 6-7 people, or up to $50-60k for a heavy jet that’ll hold 12-15 people.
Confused about this – Delta Private Jets was sold/merged with Wheels Up, and Wheels Up never offered a 20% discount to Amex plat members, so this has essentially been dead for a while.
Oh man! I used this offer every week!
As @Andy said, Delta sold Delta Private Jets to Wheels Up in January 2020 (https://news.delta.com/wheels-and-delta-close-groundbreaking-transaction-combining-delta-private-jets-wheels-and) so it makes sense for this to end.
That said, the Platinum card added the “Premium Private Jet Program” (https://global.americanexpress.com/card-benefits/detail/wheels-up) which gives you a 20% discount on Wheels Up Connect and a 40% discount on Wheels Up Core.
I haven’t dug into the details but I assume it’s basically the same benefit under a new name.
Both of these memberships have also been available through Costco for a while (at very similar pricing to the discounts you just mentioned for Plat card holders), but they aren’t on their site now – there were a lot of complaints because people thought the membership entitled them to actual flight time, when in reality it was only for the membership (access) to their platform. Not sure if they pulled them permanently or what, but TPG just had an article about Wheels Up being available through costco last week.
Outraged for all the people here pretending to be wealthy jetsetters.
I assume this is because delta sold/contracted their private jets business to wheels up
Still was more likely to use this discount that the Equinox credit.
Oh man. This is a deal breaker…. *cough*
This really seemed like it should have been a benefit for their Centurion Card rather than Platinum.
Ehh private charters really aren’t as expensive. They’re expensive yes, but you don’t have to be a multi millionaire or anything to afford a trip in an 7-8 person Citation.