Oh please, few people in the real world ware stopping short at 124k and change. Considering the fact that even here on FT it is just a percentage of those that could qualify, this is such a non-issue. Put it in perspective, there are a quarter million FT members, of those perhaps 20% are active on the DL board (50k), Of those maybe 10% are PM (5k), of those only 20% have bothered to post anything about this subject (1k), and of those probably 80% have no thoughts about trying to hold short of 125k miles.

So in effect you have 200 somewhat savvy fliers MAX that for their own reasons do not want to become DM. Unlike certain other FT movements, this one does NOT have legs in the real world.

Quite frankly I agree with the mentality of doing this. Once upon a time DL got the lions share of my business, I had top status on two carriers, and that was it, I regularly had way in excess of 200k miles (there wer no MQM's back then and as probably 99% of my tickets were Biz or YBM, that means that I did have over 300k MQM's in today speak). After the FT991 debacle I started placing my eggs in different baskets, over the last few years I have generally squeaked whatever the threshold was at Delta and I do have top status at four other carriers, which I maintain every year. Delta most likely will get a bit more business from me, BUT...............they better improve the perks.