Yes, you can give someone your Delta miles by gifting or transferring SkyMiles, but fees usually make booking their ticket from your account wiser.
Plenty of Delta flyers wonder can you give someone your delta miles when a partner, child or friend needs a ticket and cash fares look steep. The short answer is yes, but the way you share those miles has a huge effect on how far they go.
Delta sells two main tools for moving miles between people, and the airline also lets you spend miles from your own balance on travel for someone else. Once you know how each option works, you can pick the one that helps the other person without quietly draining the value of your SkyMiles balance.
Can You Give Someone Your Delta Miles? Rules And Limits
Delta allows you to give miles directly to another SkyMiles member through its Gift Miles and Transfer Miles options, and it lets you redeem your own miles to book award travel in someone else’s name. All three routes come with rules on account age, fees and yearly caps.
According to Delta’s own Gift, Transfer Or Donate Miles page, you can move miles between accounts for a charge based on the number of miles plus a flat processing fee, and the airline limits how many miles can leave or enter any one account each calendar year.
| Way To Help | What You Do | Main Trade-Off |
|---|---|---|
| Book Award Ticket For Them | Use your miles to issue a ticket in their name from your account. | No transfer fees, but the ticket follows your account rules and change policies. |
| Transfer Miles | Move miles from your SkyMiles account into theirs. | Costs about one cent per mile plus a per-transaction fee, which often wipes out value. |
| Gift Miles | Buy fresh miles in their name using cash. | Miles cost far more than they are usually worth, so this is rarely the smartest move. |
| Use Pay With Miles | Apply miles linked to a Delta Amex card to cut the price of their ticket. | Good flexibility, but only cardholders can use this and value per mile can vary. |
| Use Miles + Cash | Combine miles and money on an award ticket. | Lets you top off a small balance, yet still ties you to dynamic award pricing. |
| Donate Miles | Send miles to a SkyWish charity instead of a specific person. | No transfer fee, but miles help a cause instead of a specific person. |
| Upgrade Someone’s Flight | Spend your miles to move their ticket into a higher cabin. | Can offer comfort, yet upgrade prices shift with demand and route. |
Giving Someone Your Delta Miles Without Wasting Them
The cheapest way to help another traveler use your miles is almost always to issue the award ticket yourself. Delta confirms on its Travel With Miles page that you can book award travel for someone else even if you are not flying on that reservation.
When you do that, you skip transfer charges entirely. Your miles leave your SkyMiles balance only once, for the cost of the award. The other person receives a regular ticket, earns miles where eligible and handles check-in as usual, while you avoid paying extra cash just to move points between accounts.
Transfer Miles To Another SkyMiles Account
Transfer Miles lets you move miles you already earned into someone else’s SkyMiles account. You can send between 1,000 and 30,000 miles per transaction in blocks of 1,000, with a cap of 150,000 miles sent out of your account each calendar year and 300,000 miles received into any one account.
Each transfer triggers two charges: a per-mile fee of about one cent plus a flat processing charge on every transaction. By the time those fees post to your card, you may have spent close to the cash price of a low-cost ticket in some markets, which is why seasoned points users rarely move miles this way unless they are topping up a balance for a special trip.
Gift Miles Directly Into Their Account
Gift Miles looks similar to a transfer, but under the hood you are buying fresh miles in the recipient’s name. Delta currently sells those miles for around three and a half cents each, plus taxes. The airline often runs limited-time sales, yet the price still tends to exceed what most analysts think SkyMiles are worth.
Because of that pricing gap, buying miles purely to give someone else a ticket usually makes weak financial sense. Gift Miles works better when a traveler has a clear, high-value use in mind and only needs a small number of miles to reach that award.
Book Award Travel For Someone Else
The most efficient way to give someone your Delta miles is to keep the miles in your own account and book an award ticket for the other person. When you search on delta.com or in the Fly Delta app, you simply tick the box to pay in miles, select flights priced in miles and enter the other person’s name and details as the traveler.
Delta confirms that award travel can be issued in anyone’s name, and there are no extra charges beyond the miles and standard taxes. You keep control of the booking, your friend or relative gets the trip, and no one pays transfer or gift surcharges along the way.
Donate Miles Through SkyWish
If your goal is to help a cause instead of just one person, Delta’s SkyWish program lets you donate miles directly to selected charities. The airline does not add transfer fees to these donations, which makes them a cleaner way to clear out a balance you do not plan to spend on travel.
Miles donated this way cannot be reversed, so only use SkyWish once you are sure you will not need those miles for a ticket or upgrade of your own.
Fees, Limits And Real Value Of Shared Delta Miles
Before you choose how to give someone your Delta miles, it helps to see how much each route effectively charges you for the same trip. Delta miles tend to be worth a little over one cent each on average when used for flights, based on public valuations from travel reward analysts. When you pay a full cent per mile to transfer them, plus a flat processing fee, you are giving up nearly all of that value.
Gift Miles tilts even further in Delta’s favor, since the selling price per mile is several cents. That structure exists because the airline prefers to sell miles at a margin instead of giving away free flights. From your side of the booking screen, that means you should treat miles as a discount coupon that works best when you lock in a good redemption price, not as a currency you shift around lightly.
When Sharing Delta Miles Makes Sense
The best time to give someone your Delta miles is when the value of the trip clearly beats the cost of the miles plus any added fees. That might be a long-planned family visit, a last ticket home during peak season or a rare sale fare where miles stretch especially far.
Because SkyMiles do not expire under current rules, you can wait for those sweet spots. There is no rush to move miles only to watch them lose power through transfer fees or poor redemptions.
| Travel Scenario | Best Way To Help | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| A friend lacks miles and needs a one-off trip. | Book an award ticket from your own account. | Avoids transfer fees and lets you pick flights that fit your schedule too. |
| A partner is a few thousand miles short of a dream cabin. | Send a small transfer to top up their balance. | Fees take a smaller bite when they open the door to a high-value redemption. |
| Two relatives both hold small balances that feel useless alone. | Use each account to book separate trips or one-way tickets. | Burns miles cleanly instead of paying cash just to combine them. |
| You hold a Delta Amex and see a cheap cash deal. | Use Pay With Miles to cut the ticket cost. | Miles act like a coupon and can beat some award prices. |
| You want to help during a crisis but cannot travel. | Donate miles through SkyWish to support relief partners. | Moves help where they are needed without extra out-of-pocket cost. |
Practical Tips For Protecting Your SkyMiles Balance
Think of your SkyMiles as part of your travel budget. When someone asks for help, check both award pricing and cash fares, then weigh transfer or gift fees. In many cases you will find that booking from your own balance or simply buying a ticket for them beats paying to move points around.
Set clear expectations when you agree to share miles. Decide how many miles you are willing to spend, which flights you are comfortable booking and who will pay change fees or extras such as seat upgrades. Sharing these details up front prevents awkward conversations later, especially when plans shift.
Finally, keep an eye on your account a few times a year. Review recent redemptions, make sure your contact information stays current and check that every flight you took credited miles correctly. Those habits help your balance grow over time and make the answer to can you give someone your delta miles a confident yes, backed by a plan that protects your future trips. When you take a moment to price every option, your miles stop feeling confusing and start working like a clear travel tool that lets you help people you care about without shortchanging your own future plans too much today.