Travelers wait for an Uber ridesharing vehicle at Los Angeles International Airport on February 8, 2023.
Mario Tama | getty images
delta airlines The lucrative SkyMiles loyalty program Uber This spring, the company announced Tuesday that the airline was ending an eight-year partnership with a smaller ride-hailing competitor. lift.
Once customer accounts are linked, Delta SkyMiles members will earn 1 mile per dollar on UberX airport rides, 2 miles per dollar on “premium rides” like Uber Comfort and Uber Black, and 3 miles per dollar on Uber Reserve rides. You can do it. Uber said Tuesday. For the Uber Eats food delivery service, members earn 1 mile per dollar on orders of $40 or more from restaurants and grocery stores.
“With record numbers of travelers taking to the skies, we’re focused on helping make airport travel as efficient, affordable and easy as possible,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a press release.
Delta Air Lines and other airlines have expanded their partnerships to earn and redeem frequent flyer miles as part of a loyalty program that has generated billions of dollars for the airlines. Other Delta partners include: Starbucks, hertz and ticketmaster.
Customers who link their Lyft accounts to Delta can accrue miles through April 7, a Delta spokesperson said.
“Customers with linked accounts will be contacted directly by Delta and Lyft in the coming days,” the spokesperson said. “We’re grateful for our partnership with Lyft, which benefits our loyal customers who have accumulated billions of miles.”
Travelers wait for a rideshare vehicle at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) in San Francisco, California, United States, Tuesday, July 23, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | getty images
“Several years ago, we partnered with the first airline to find more ways to enhance and innovate the travel experience, turning customers into Lyft loyalists,” Lyft said in a statement. “We continue to expand our horizons by partnering with leading brands that share our obsession with the customer, such as Alaska Airlines, Chase, DoorDash, Mastercard, Hilton, Disney and Bilt.”
Delta did not comment on why it was switching ride-hailing partners, but its credit card partners American Express Uber offers select cardholder credits that can be used for rides and food deliveries.
Delta, which reports quarterly earnings on Friday, estimated at its investor day in November that it would receive about $7 billion in 2024 from the AmEx partnership and set a long-term target of $10 billion per year.
Lyft had 24.4 million active passengers at the end of the third quarter, and customers booked more than 216 million rides on the platform in the three months ending Sept. 30. This represents a 16% increase over the previous year.
Meanwhile, Uber had 161 million monthly active users on both its ride-hailing and food delivery platforms as of the end of September, and its customers had logged more than 2.8 billion rides, including delivery, freight, ridesharing and private vehicles. In the third quarter, it increased by 17% compared to the same period last year.
Last year, Uber launched a shuttle service from Manhattan to New York’s LaGuardia Airport.
Delta and Uber announced a new partnership at the CES tech show in Las Vegas, with Delta also saying it would roll out an artificial intelligence-powered “assistant” in its app and upgrade its in-flight entertainment system.
