American Express and Delta Air Lines Debut First-Ever Credit Card Made From Boeing 747
American Express and Delta Air Lines continue their storied partnership with the debut of a limited-edition special new credit card.
The Boeing 747 Card design made is out of airplane metal specifically for Delta SkyMiles Reserve and Reserve Business Card Members. This will be the first-ever credit card design made from airplane metal, offering members a literal piece of the sky to carry wherever their travels take them.
“This partnership goes back 60 plus years and what we share as two organizations is a strong focus on customer-centricity and service,” Anthony Cirri, EVP, Head of Global Consumer Lending and CoBrand at American Express told TravelPulse. “We’re grounded in these same core values, which I think makes that partnership great. We’re always looking for ways to kind of continuously innovate within our existing businesses and our joint businesses as well, and that’s what this is right – this is innovation, this is raising the bar in terms of form factors within credit cards and we’re super excited about it.”
In the “Golden Age of Travel,” the iconic 747 was dubbed the “Queen of the Skies.” It’s a plane that triggers nostalgia among many aviation lovers.
American Express and Delta Air Lines decided to honor the legacy of an important piece of aviation history by using the last Delta Boeing 747 aircraft to fly the skies to make such a unique offering for card members.
The specialty card design was created with 25% metal from Delta Ship #6307, a retired Boeing 747-400 that has quite the story. The aircraft provided military transport to service men and women, helped with an evacuation out of Florida during Hurricane Irma and also a flight of Delta volunteers uniting orphans with their new families.
For Delta, it’s just another step in the company’s innovative ways.
The card comes with exclusive content via an augmented reality experience that includes Boeing 747 history, interviews with Delta pilots and crew members, and an up-close look at Delta Ship #6307’s transformation from a passenger plane into the card design.
“We’re always innovating across the board, whether it’s things we’re doing with sustainability, even more things we continue to do with American Express,” Dwight James, Senior Vice President, Customer Engagement & Loyalty for Delta Air Lines, and CEO, Delta Vacations told TravelPulse. “With our loyalty program, for example, we’re constantly putting things in the marketplace based on customer feedback as well. I can list a variety of things we did even during the pandemic that other carriers didn’t do. We extended their medallion status before other carriers extended status for their customers, we added new features such as allowing customers to use award redemption to earn status which had never been done in U.S. industry before. So, innovation for us is something that we’re constantly focusing on based on customer feedback, but also being just different. We want to differentiate our products and services and our capabilities relative to the industry if we can.”
The moment you hold this card you can feel the difference in its weight, which adds an empowerment element to it said James.
“It’s a conversation piece, even if you’re not an aviation enthusiast, and it also brings an element of personalization,” said James. “From a conversation piece, I mean, if you’re out to dinner, you’re taking our friends and they see the card they’re gonna ask ‘where did you get that, tell me more about it,’ and so in that moment there’s an empowerment element where you as the customer are now even more connected with Delta and American Express and to tell the history that many people don’t even know about.”
“In addition to that there’s a personalization element where we’re saying to our customers, personalization doesn’t have to be all about technology, it can be also about something that’s durable, that’s tangible, that is connected to you.”