Originally Posted by
HikerT
Originally Posted by
TheBOSman
Yes but you are giving up 25k points in a more valuable program for 25k SkyMiles. At a bare minimum, you give up 5k SkyMiles versus spending that $25k on an SPG card.
Not really. All depends on what DL branded card you use. DL Reserve is a fantastic card for manufactured spend. 60K spend = 30K MQMs + 90K RDMs. That's easily worth $1800. Deduct the annual fee from that value and you're still getting $1300 of value, ignoring any value for upgrade priority, lounge access, FC companion ticket, etc. I'll take that any day over 60K SPG.
But then the elite status isn't worth as much if you are generating that level of spend, because you are not flying as much. It will depend on how much you fly and use the status, rather than simply having it. Also, I'm assuming that someone who hasn't done this before will spend up to that $25k mark, simply to hold their status. You're jumping up a bit higher. We are both right for the levels we've chosen, if I were to do it myself I wouldn't stop at $25k either and would go to $60k as you mention, then it is clearly in favor of the DL card, but that hasn't changed from before MQDs, now there is simply an additional benefit to it. FT as a whole has a very distorted view of how many low fare elites there are, we number under 2000 at best in my opinion across all of the North American airlines, but it happens that a majority of them are members here (with many of them very active members). Mileage running appeals to only a few people, and as I'm in the middle of one and won't sleep for about 21 hours straight during my weekend time off from work, I can see why it doesn't appeal to many.