Who's paying for the travel? Is it business or a long distance relationship? The reason I ask is because, as a MSY flyer, even though I get the miles to qualify, I have never gotten anywhere close to the "spend" required to get status under the new Delta rules.

So if you are paying for the travel, DL makes no sense because you'll save thousands shopping on price -- or at least I have, I'm an aggressive shopper. I can forgo a lot of upgrades for that kind of money. If your boss is paying for the travel, and you are price insensitive, I guess it's a different story.

DL is wonderful for domestic upgrades and since it sounds like you will be flying shorter domestic hops, it would otherwise be worth looking at. But who wants to hassle with wondering how much of your ticket price counts toward elite qualification (taxes don't count) and all the other nonsense that makes it clear DL doesn't respect your time.

Of course, AA doesn't respect your time either but they usually disrespect it by asking you to play some stupid game to get extra miles, something a busy person can just ignore. DL's new rules not only waste time and energy, they probably do need to be deeply understood if you want to get much benefit from the program

So this ex-MSY flyer can no longer recommend DL. :-(


It is also a huge, huge hassle to search for and spend DL miles. There are whole blogs devoting to explaining to people how they can possibly use their miles -- and almost everyone I know (other than myself) usually just gives up anyway.