Originally Posted by
Zeeb
Actual flight earnings will drop by a large amount for the vast majority of flyers. But credit card earnings won't. So I wouldn't expect redemption to actually get any easier.
Maybe. To know this we'd need to know the number of miles issued by flying vs by credit card. If anyone has real numbers on this, I'd love to see them. (Perhaps they're in the annual report?)
As a simple example, an Amex card holder spending $12500 gets 25000 miles (assuming exclusive use for DL purchases). A DM flyer earns almost the same 25000 miles by flying JFK-SFO round trip twice, at an off peak cost of perhaps $700. ie: It's much, much easier to earn miles by flying, especially if you're not pushing tens or hundreds of thousands through your credit card.