There are two types of Delta companion tickets<\/a>: 1) The domestic Main Cabin variant that you get with the Delta Platinum card, and 2) the domestic Main Cabin, Comfort+, or First Class variant that you get with the Delta Reserve. There\u2019s a lot of nuance to where you can use these tickets, but for the most part just assume that you can use them on any round-trip Delta route within the continental US\u2019s lower 48 states.<\/p>\n When you purchase airfare or redeem miles, you\u2019re booking into a specific fare class which is potentially different for each and every leg. Delta companion tickets require specific fare bucket availability for your itinerary:<\/p>\n So, to look for Delta Companion ticket availability, you need to be able to look for specific fare buckets. This is child\u2019s play with ITA Matrix. It also gives you better results than Delta\u2019s booking engine will, and often lets you find cheaper tickets that qualify for the companion fare than you\u2019ll find on Delta.com or by talking to an agent and having them search for you.<\/p>\n I\u2019m going to break my \u201cone picture per post\u201d rule in this series because I know some of you are visual learners. My search box for a Reserve companion ticket will look like this:<\/p>\n Normally I use bookwithmatrix.com<\/a> for booking anything from ITA Matrix because you just cut and paste the booking results table into that website and it\u2019ll forward you to Delta (or another OTA if you choose) with the exact flights and fare buckets already pre-filled. With companion tickets though, Delta doesn\u2019t let you do that; instead, you\u2019ll have to start your booking at delta.com\/redeem<\/a> and go from there. <\/p>\n If you can\u2019t replicate the results ITA Matrix produces with Delta\u2019s booking engine, first try setting up your airfare using a multi-city search. If that doesn\u2019t work, you can call and give the agent each of the exact flight dates, flight numbers, and fare codes and they can manually book it for you. I\u2019ve only had to do that a single time though, so it\u2019s likely a rare occurrence.<\/p>\n I use all of my Delta companion certificates every single year, and they\u2019re really valuable.<\/p>\n A final travel hacking tip: Delta says you need to use your co-branded Delta American Express card to pay for airfare when using a companion ticket. Don\u2019t trust them, they lie. Any American Express will do, like the Personal Platinum which awards 5x on airfare.<\/p>\n I\u2019m going off-brand with today\u2019s post, but stick with it, it\u2019ll be worth it I promise. Introduction I use ITA Matrix essentially every single time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":3,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[60,63,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airlines","category-ita-matrix","category-travel-hacking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2107"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7238,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2107\/revisions\/7238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Fare Codes<\/h4>\n
\n
The Actual Search<\/h4>\n
\n
\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/ita-delta-companion-917x1024.png\")
Booking<\/h4>\n
Fin<\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/milesearnandburn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Untitled-945x1024.png\")