Miles and Cash - do you get miles????
 

I was thinking of using a combination of miles and cash to purchase a round trip ticket. Question: Do I get full mileage credit (MQM and regular miles) for this flight with this kind of ticket?

Full MQM's, and you get regular (RDM's) miles for the portion of the ticket you paid with cash (excluding taxes and fees)

The reason I wrote Flyer Talk is that the DL agent that I spoke to said it was considered an "award" ticket and received NO miles. I think what is confusing is noting the difference between their "Pay with Miles" program and "Miles and Cash" program. I am really confused!

Dennis88 is correct, with "Pay with Miles" you receive full MQM's for the trip and the portion that you paid in cash less the taxes and fees earns regular Skymiles.

It used to be the you earned miles/MQMs only when purchasing first or business class when using PWM, but not for coach tickets. Did this change?

"Miles + Cash", which is one of the 3 booking options at the top (Money, Miles, Miles + Cash) is treated like an Award ticket. No MQMs, no redeemable miles earned. "Pay with Miles" is for Amex cardholders only, and is selected at the Booking Summary page. Pay with Miles is treated like a paid, Retail ticket. You earn full MQMs and earn the equivalent MQDs of however much you pay in money.

However, IIRC at some point, it was important if you wer using pay with miles not to use miles to cover the entire fare. You needed to pay taxes and fees plus a little bit more with money in order to get the MQMs.

Similarly, it can be tricky to use miles to upgrade and earn the full premium cabin MQMs.

The DL website clearly shows how much you need to pay in cash when using your miles with the PWM option. There is a drop down chart and depending on the amount you are going to redeem you see how much you still need to pay. Where is the issue?

I bought two Miles + Cash tickets for a family vacation last year and received no miles or MQMs - it was treated as an award ticket. In hindsight I should have bought one award ticket and one cash ticket and at least gotten miles for the latter.

There are like 3 different answers to the question. Can someone please clarify?
(option: earned rewards)
Pay with Cash: MQM+RDM
Miles: None
Miles+Cash: ???

Where is the option to PWM in the booking process?

My company has a zillion AMEX points, you're saying I can use those points to purchase tickets (along with paying a little $$) and I will earn MQMs? Why have I been transferring those points 1 for 1 and using Skymiles to purchase award tickets? Damn!

"Why" hopefully is that you were getting better than $0.01 per mile on your awards. A lot of awards I've looked at are $0.013 per mile value which isn't that much better, and business class to Australia awards are worse than a penny each!

I was wondering about this yesterday as well. Is this confirmed?

I have over 150,000 points on my Amex card. Just to make sure I'm 100% clear:
- go to AMEX Travel Site and find your trip.
- Choose to pay with Rewards Points (AMEX, not DL)
- Earn Delta MQMs as if it is a normal ticket paid with cash... since it basically was.

This works? Do you also get MQDs?

You need to have a Delta Amex card in order to use PWM. The Pay with Miles option will show on the check-out page if you have a Delta Amex card and are logged into your Delta account. You will earn full MQM's and partial MQD's (based on portion paid with cash).