Just How Many SkyMiles Medallion Members Are There?

Being a newbie FlyerTalker, I don't know if this subject has come up before...but here it goes:
does anyone know how many Silver, Gold, Platinum, Flying Colonels, Million Milers, etc. DL has? Apprximately, of course. I have seen some, very limited stats about FF programs before - mostly an estimate of how many members each program has (AA has the most, I think; then UA; DL was listed at 17M+ members), total miles earned by everyone, etc.
How would one find this out?

Not easy to find out numbers. Suggest you contact friend at Langley Va. offices of Fed agency known as CIA; maybe they can help.

The CIA neither confirms nor denies the existence of airline travel programs or benefits deriving from them. Nor do we admit that we exist. If there are airline travel programs, we deny any knowledge of their existence. Anyone seeking furthier information about the CIA should address the Department of Agriculture Web site at www.agricultre.gov and advise this site of any response you might receive.

If this were a contest, I would guess:
DL FF accounts: 20 million
medallion 200 000
gold medallion 35 000
higher level 10 000
Ask Langley for the answer.

I had this conversation with a UA 1K member last year. He said there were 12000 1K members. We figured there were about 10000 DL PM members. My curiosity piqued I asked several FAs the question. Nobody knew the correct answer. It will be interesting to hear the true figures if they are revealed
in this thread.

Just came across these figures, and thought you guys would like to see them.

In 1999, DL had 51,414 Platinum Medallions.
In 1999, DL had 700,000+ Silvers and Golds.

With base mileage now counting on DL/AM/AF/KE flights, I'm sure these figures have only gotten larger in the past two years.

I think last I heard, the CRC had something like 270,000 members. That's a lot of people to squeeze into 50 clubs.

And another interesting fact:
Out of the 29 Million+ SkyMiles members, 60% of them fly 7 round-trips per year.

Take care people.

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DALE

Thanks for the info New2FT, and welcome to FlyerTalk.

Always good to have a DL person here...with the hopes that you may offer some insider insight.

I assume your info comes from a company document. I caution you that some other DL folks have been here & gone, we think due to pressure from DL management. Be careful whose e-mail you answer...

DALe,
Shadow is absolutely correct in his advise. Glad to see that you have chosen to re-visit us again. Any thoughts about possible changes to the new and improved 2001 Skymiles program or "Simply Good Business"?

Dale,

Welcome to FlyerTalk. You numbers seem awfully high to me.

If there are 29,000,000 members, 60% of that is 17,400,000, times seven times two (its round trip) is 243,600,000. That means DL enplaned AT LEAST 243,600,000 people. And that doesn't include any of the SkyMiles members who flew less than 7 RT's, or any trips from people who fly more than 7RT's, or people who aren't SkyMiles members.

According to the DL web site, DL enplaned "+116,595,000" passengers in all of 2000. That's less than half of the pax they'd have to enplane for 60% of the SkyMiles members to fly 7 RT's.

Where did you get your numbers?

Does anyone know if there are any published statistics as to how many SkyMiles members there are? How many of those are SM, GM and PM? Russ, mind answering this one? My curiosity is eating me...

I read in the paper last week that there were 29 million members. The article did not break down the numbers by elite level.

Chris

Sorry for the late reply......

When I asked that question internally, I was told:
"Sorry the numbers are strictly confidential and are not published."

I (through other methods) figured out the number of CRC members, and the number of PM*s, but I can say what those are. The total SkyMiles membership base has passed 30 million; sorry I couldn't say anything more.




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The information I provide is in no way the authoritative voice of Delta. I do not work for Corporate Communications, nor in Customer Care. I do not represent the final word for Delta when asked a question. I simply try to answer questions to the best of my knowledge, and try to direct people to the correct answer and/or point them in the right direction to find that answer. If you want to double check my answers, please E-Mail Delta Customer Care or just send an e-mail to: [email protected]

Thank you for letting me participate.

Thanks for your reply Russ. I kinda thought the numbers would be priveleged information, but wanted to give it a try anyways.

A related question - any knowledge (or just a good guess) of what percentage of travellers are Skymiles members? This would be based strictly on a Skymiles number being present on a reservation or ticket, we'll exclude the very small percentage of people who submit a ticket without a FF number for mileage credit after the fact.

No apologies necessary if this is also privileged information.

Jeff

I would bet there is a very high percentage of SkyMiles members that fly once a year, or less. Somewhere along the line they sign up, then don't fly again for years. That really inflates the numbers.