Originally Posted by
vincentharris
DL could care less unless you are spending AT MINIMUM $100k plus a year on tickets pre tax. I spent $20 some odd thousand this year in pre tax fares (with lots of expensive fares) and I know DL could care less.
That's a bit of a silly perspective. Delta doesn't care about someone who is spending $100K either. They care about
groups of people that spend that (or other) amounts of money. And they treat those people in ways preferential ways that Delta believes will help them be more profitable. It is not crazy for a person to wonder why that group of flyer (high MQD low MQM) is treated worse than the opposite (high MQM lower MQD) as a group. Obviously the former is more profitable on average to Delta since more miles in the air cost more money for Delta.
I have no doubt that Delta will eventually move to a revenue-only model, or at least a model where revenue is the most restrictive piece (rather than today, where miles are usually more restrictive except for the types of customers Delta generally would care less about to begin with). Delta does not do this because people would freak out about it.
The way it will happen is that Delta will slowly raise MQD thresholds higher and higher (on an average basis probably a few percentage points above the rate of airline ticket inflation). This could be coordinated with expansion of MQM fare bonuses so that MQMs (e.g., main cabin gets 25% bonus, or at least H/Q/M fares get a bonus, etc) become less restrictive than today, making MQD the primary determinant.