Delta Points Deal - InsideHook

How badly do you want to fly private?

Like 2,500,000 Delta points badly?

Because Delta’s newest promotion offers exactly that: an exchange rate of 2.5 million points for a $25,000 JetCard, which is good for about four hours of private jet time.

Before you say, “Hey, that sounds like highway robbery!”, consider that hoarding millions of Delta points is probably easier than, say, recording a bestselling hip hop album or becoming CEO of some energy company fracking its way through the Upper Midwest, which are both time-tested routes to routine travel by private jet.

But our question is this: Is business class — or even economy — really that bad? (Answer: no.)

As Skift points out, this new setup updates Delta’s previous spin on private jet time, in which the airline offered last-minute upgrades — at a cost ranging from $300 to $800 — to private jets. Because the airline could only take advantage of open seats on those jets at the last minute, booking them was a time-intensive operation — and ultimately too burdensome for airline staff.

Is this the solution, though, for Delta loyalists? Two-point-five million points, well — that’s a lot of trips to Orlando and back. Twenty-eight, to be specific.

Or roughly 12 first-class round-trip tickets between San Francisco and Vegas.

Or 25 economy round-trips from L.A. to Honolulu.

Is a trip to Hawaii every other week for a year worth four hours in a private jet?

Is there a single situation in which that would be a realistic situation?

We’d rather to get to work on the hip-hop album.

Meet your guide

Diane Rommel

Diane Rommel has written for The Wall Street Journal, Outside, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Travel + Leisure, Wallpaper and Afar, as well as The Cut, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post and McSweeney’s. She once drove from London to Mongolia, via Siberia.