Originally Posted by
Yaatri
Thank you for your advice. Gradually, I am being convinced. I have been trying to stay with Delta, but it's making it very difficult. I have to find a way to burn lots of miles very quickly. With 4 plats in the family, we had lots of miles. Despite burning lots of miles, I still have almost 2 million miles left. My kids grew up with NW. Delta would have had 4 FF's for life, but it blew. I am going to jump ship just as soon as I am able to.
If I were you, I would do this:
1) Status match to *A carrier CO or UA. This way you have at least *A Gold and start to earn double miles with E+.
2) Make sure that miles from these 4 SM accounts in the family don't expire.
3) Watch any opening of saver J awards on DL so you can redeem these miles at a reasonable rate.
2 million SM miles may get you 4 J awards because I have seen Delta asked for 500K miles each.
When I switched to UA, my account had 800K DL miles. So my job was easier. If you can get some saver J awards on DL for next few years, then you are in good shape since you are building up your CO/UA account balance while redeeming SM for vacation.
I started UA Mileage Plus with zero mile balance. After 4 years, I have more than 1 million.
Most of time, I sit in business class to Asia while paying $1,200 economy fare.
And it is very easy for me to redeem saver biz (125K miles) or first class awards (145K miles) on UA or *A.
Try to cut your losses and run. The longer you stay with DL, the worse. At some point you have to decide enough is enough.