AA's award availability/pricing on its own metal has gotten pretty bad too, and is now in various ways worse than DL's.
Originally Posted by
baccarat_king
There are still quite a few "around here," who are aggressively "mileage-running" (on Delta) this year. Don't really have much of an opinion regarding this. I personally, don't have the time; and the effort seems mis-directed. But, that's just my (personal) gut feeling.
Flying DL just for redeemable DL miles? For elite status as well, but not just for redeemable DL miles. For a visit with the redeemable miles factored in as a discount/rebate on a trip taken for more reasons than just redeemable DL miles? Yes, but not just for DL miles.
The era of flying DL merely to acquire redeemable DL miles has been over for a while. Those DL MRs are history.
That said, maybe I'm wrong. There may be outliers -- as not every actor in a marketplace makes rational purchase decisions on the basis of even rather readily available information -- but I would love to find even one such example of a pure DL MR for just redeemable DL miles.