<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Efrem:
When Delta made this change in 1995, they grandfathered all the lifetime miles people had as of the change date, but counted only flight miles from that point forward.</font>
When Delta made this change in 1995, they lost my business forever. I saw this as the "last straw" for me (SkyMiles was bad enough, but this was really awful). I switched to AA, and from nearly 0, made 1M last year.
I still have over 300K in "lifetime" DL mileage.
The ironic thing is that most of my AA lifetime total is actual "butt-in-the-seat" miles.
Shortly after I switched my allegiance, DL tried to greatly increase the fares my SLC-based company was paying, and decrease our corporate discounts. The company then negotiated a deal with AA, made them our preferred carrier worldwide, and leased part of a 737 for the SLC-SJC-SLC daily runs.
Moral of this story: DL got greedy, DL lost business.
-Plat