How to protect your SkyMiles while you are alive
There is no way to name a beneficiary or successor on a SkyMiles account. While the account holder is alive, Delta Air Lines allows transfers to another member and gift purchases.
Because Delta Air Lines' terms forfeit SkyMiles at death, anything preserved is moved or used while the account holder is alive. There is no way to name a beneficiary or successor on a SkyMiles account. While the account holder is alive, Delta Air Lines allows transfers to another member and gift purchases.
How to protect your SkyMiles
Naming who acts after a death
- Designation
There is no way to name a beneficiary or successor on a SkyMiles account; miles move only between the accounts of living Members.1
What Delta Air Lines's terms say about sharing and transfers4
- Pooling with family
Delta offers no family pooling or household sharing program.1
- Transfers to another member
Members can transfer miles to other SkyMiles Members for $0.01 per mile plus a $30 processing fee per transaction, plus applicable taxes, in 1,000-mile increments of 1,000 to 30,000 miles per recipient and up to 4 recipients per transaction.2
Each account can send up to 150,000 miles and receive up to 300,000 miles per calendar year; both accounts must be at least 10 days old with at least 1 mile earned, and transferred miles post within 24 to 48 hours.2
- Gifting and purchases for others
Members can book Award Travel for someone else without flying with them, and can donate miles to charity through the SkyWish program.2
- Expiry and activity requirements
Under the SkyMiles Mileage Expiration policy, miles do not expire.1
Should you save your passwords for your family?
Some people store account passwords so a family member can sign in later. The practice has three practical limits:
- Two-factor authentication often blocks it. Most accounts require a second factor — a code sent to a phone, an authenticator app, a passkey, or a physical key. A saved password alone frequently does not grant access, and the recovery codes that would are easy to lose or let go stale.
- It usually conflicts with the platform's terms. Most operators prohibit account sharing and signing in as another person, including after a death. Stored credentials are not the operator's recognized access path, and using them can violate the terms of service.
- Operators provide other paths. Where an operator offers a designation tool — Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager, a beneficiary designation — that mechanism grants access the operator recognizes. A password manager's own emergency-access or legacy feature passes credentials through a controlled process. Digital assets named in a will or trust give a fiduciary authority under each state's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA).
Sources
Data sourced from Delta Air Lines primary sources (5 pages reviewed). How we research.
SkyMiles customer support
SkyMiles Member line (Delta General Sales & Services)
Phone
Hours
Website
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