Definitely. DL has experienced an 'inflation' in Elite travelers. Rollover is one; the merger with Northwest is another. The Elite-Plus tiers were a mediocre attempt to sooth pre-merger/pre-rollover Medallion members. The whole thing would been more fair if the Diamond cutoff was actually 100K and not 125K.

With that said, I know my booking behavior has definitely been influenced by rollovers. I doubt I am alone. I still think rollovers were brilliant; however they should have been coupled to other improved benefits or at the very least no deterioration of them.

My hope is that other carriers (like CO) would match the rollover, but maybe with a twist so as not to dilute benefits or inflate elite numbers too much.

One possibly way (a compromise) would be to establish new tier levels, say 35/60/85, effective 2012 and introduce rollovers for 2011.

I would be very interested in the data.

Thanks for your input. All the programs have their pluses and minuses a those depend a lot of where you travel and how often. Trying to figure out which program provides the most benefit is a challenge, at least for me. Rollovers for me gave DL the edge; I know some will disagree (and even strongly).