A guide to Delta Sky Club

Why you should make a Delta Sky Club lounge your first destination at the airport.

What is Delta Sky Club?

Delta Sky Club is exclusive. Yes, it’s a group of airline lounges owned by Delta, but not everyone can walk through its doors.  It’s a members-only club that aims to take the stress out of travel for people who spend most of their life in the air. The Delta Sky Club has created a space that not only helps but enhances the traveler’s journey.

If you’ve spent too much time staring at your computer or watching in-flight movies, you can take a tour of a Delta Sky Club lounge in-house art gallery. If you have been so busy you’ve been eating on the run, you can enjoy one of the nutritious dishes created by celebrity chefs. And if you just need to feel refreshed during your stopover, you can step into one of the shower suites packed with designer grooming products.

Wherever you are in the world, you can find one of 52 Delta Sky Club locations, which have each been designed to offer you a home away from home.  Nine of the Delta Sky Club lounges can be found within Delta’s main hub of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, but the rest are as far away as Santiago and Tokyo.

How to become a Delta Sky Club member

To be given the chance to walk through the doors of a Delta Sky Club lounge, you need to have lounge membership, be flying first or business class with Delta or one of its partner airlines on the day that you travel, have a credit card that gives you Delta Sky Club access, or have Diamond Medallion status with Delta’s SkyMiles frequent flyer program.

If you haven’t got time to reach Diamond Medallion status with Delta’s frequent flyer program, you can purchase a Delta Sky Club membership that gives you immediate access to the lounge. There are two packages available – Delta Sky Club Executive Membership and Delta Sky Club Individual Membership.

Delta Sky Club Executive Membership offers you unlimited use of the lounge with up to two guests each visit. You can pay 845 USD for an annual membership or cash in 84500 SkyMiles. Or for an annual membership, you can take out a Delta Sky Club Individual Membership for 545 USD or use 54500 SkyMiles. You can still take two guests into the lounge if you have a Delta Sky Club Individual Membership, you will just need to pay 29 USD per visit.

You can purchase memberships online or at the Delta Sky Club lounge on the day that you travel. Your membership card is digital and available for use immediately after you enroll. It sits in the My Wallet section of your SkyMiles account on Delta.com or in the Fly Delta App because th team at Delta know you won’t want to fill your wallet with any more plastic.

What you can enjoy in a Delta Sky Club lounge

If you’re flying in the U.S., the first thing that you can expect is easy Delta Sky Club access. You don’t have to worry about fumbling for your boarding pass, ticket, or club membership card. Since 2017, Delta started placing biometric check-ins at its Delta Sky Club lounges after trialing biometrics at boarding and bag drop sites in a number of airport terminals. By just placing two fingers on a fingerprint reader, you can walk into any of the 50 US Delta Sky Club locations.

Gil West, Delta’s COO said in a press release in 2018 the airline would continue to look into biometrics across its many locations.

“We will continue to gauge employee and customer feedback to refine the offering and evaluate additional touch points where biometrics make travel seamless,” he said.

The aim of the game for Delta Sky Club is relaxation. You won’t find any conference rooms in a Delta Sky Club – they want to create a members’ club ambience for their guests to help them enjoy a little downtime. However, if you want to check-in with the office, that’s not a problem. The Wi-Fi in each Delta Sky Club is plentiful, as are the power points should you need to recharge your laptop or smartphone.

Each club offers great food options and comfy chairs to kick back in, but there are still a few show-stopping Delta Sky Club lounges that you should look out for. One is the award-winning Delta Sky Club at Concourse B at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Taking up 25,000 square feet of the terminal, the club offers dishes created by acclaimed Atlanta Chef Linton Hopkins as well as a wine wall curated by Master Sommelier Andrea Robinson.  You can choose your favorite complimentary tipple from the bar, then take a seat by the floor-to-ceiling windows to enjoy panoramic views of the Atlanta skyline. Or, if you want to enjoy a further culture fix you can take a tour of The Gallery, which has a rotating program of works by local artists from Atlanta.

Another award-winning Delta Sky Club can be found at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York. Here, you can freshen up in one of the shower suites, enjoy a kale chicken Caesar salad in the restaurant, then take a seat on the outdoor terrace and catch some rays while you wait for your flight. In the city that never sleeps, you might finally be able to catch some shut-eye here.

The Delta Sky Club at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is focused on creating a spa-like feel. The airline lounge joined with Westin Hotels & Resorts group to help make you feel extra pampered. When you step inside the shower suites in the lounge, you won’t just be able to enjoy those luxurious bathroom products, but you will be able to wrap yourself up in those plush Heavenly Bath Towels.

The Delta Sky Club at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport focuses on making your journey run smoothly. It has a concierge and member service desk, so you have no fear of missing your flight. You can simply focus on enjoying dishes by local celebrity chef Ethan Stowell or looking out of the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking panoramic views of the airport.

The Delta Sky Club loves to make its guests feel welcome, a quality obvious at both Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport and Denver International Airport. The Delta Sky Club in Detroit comes with roaring log fires and the Delta Sky Club in Denver offers complimentary Colorado craft beer and Starbucks coffee.

International Delta Sky Clubs that you can enjoy

Delta Sky Clubs has international lounges in Santiago, Chile and Tokyo, Japan, offering the same standards of service that you would find at the Delta Sky Clubs in the U.S. Tokyo Narita Airport has two Delta Sky Clubs within its terminal, the larger one being Delta Sky Club No2. Here you can find everything you need to help recharge you for your journey.

In fact, the lounge is so large that the staff serve up a sprawling buffet on either side of the room. Among the array of dishes on display, you can find some Japanese favorites, such as yakitori and sushi, so if you haven’t had a chance to try many local dishes on your trip you can enjoy them here. You can even make a stop at one of the Japanese beer dispensers, which are filled with Asahi and Suntory beers to quench your thirst. The Delta Sky Club also thinks of its younger guests. If you have children traveling with you, you will be pleased to know that this Delta Sky Club also includes a small playroom filled with colorful soft-furnishings for kids.

The Delta Sky Club in Santiago is equally as welcoming. With its clusters of deep, leather chairs, there’s no better place for you to enjoy a complimentary pisco sour.

If you are a Diamond, Platinum or Gold Medallion member of Delta’s frequent flyer club you can have access to these international Delta Sky Clubs as well as complimentary access to partner lounges when traveling on a SkyTeam international flight or SkyTeam U.S. flight. This opens up an array of new clubs to you, including the KLM lounges at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, any lounges owned by Korean Airlines, Air France, or China Airlines, the CIP lounge at Bangkok International Airport, and the Virgin Atlantic lounges at Terminal 1, Terminal 2, and Terminal 3 at Heathrow Airport in London.

What are the benefits of Delta Sky Club membership?

There are so many benefits that come with being a Delta Sky Club member that you’ll start asking yourself why you didn’t become a member sooner. You can also use the SkyMiles that you earn to buy flights on its partner airlines.

You can even earn miles without flying. If you live in the U.S., and you are an American Express customer, you will be eligible for the Delta Sky Club American Express partnership, which lets you earn SkyMiles by spending with your Delta SkyMiles Credit Card. For example, if you make 2000 USD on purchases using your Gold Delta SkyMiles Credit Card within the first three months of signing up, you will earn 60000 bonus SkyMiles. The Delta SkyMiles Credit Cards also give you complimentary Delta Sky Club access.

If you live outside the U.S., you can still enjoy a range of benefits with the Delta Sky Club membership, including the fact you don’t have to spend your SkyMiles solely with Delta. You can use them to buy flights with its partnership airlines, such as Air France, Virgin Atlantic, KLM, or Korean Air.

Although you might want to keep flying with Delta regularly, as the airline makes sure to reward its frequent flyers. A General SkyMiles member can earn five miles per 1 USD they spend, while a Silver Medallion member could earn eight miles per 1 USD spent. A Platinum SkyMiles member can earn 11 miles for every 1 USD.

It is definitely worth building up as many SkyMiles as you can for Delta regularly offers SkyMiles flash sales. That dream trip you have been thinking of taking could be paid for with all of those miles you accrued on your business trips. Previous award flights on offer have included New York to Zurich for 32000 SkyMiles round-trip and Washington DC to London for 44000 SkyMiles round-trip.

So is it really for just members only?

You could have snapped up a Delta Sky Club day pass up until January 2019 for 59 USD, but now, the day pass is no longer available. The only way you can walk through the doors of a Delta Sky Club lounge is if you’re a member.