Originally Posted by SuperG1955

I was not able to requalify as a DM for 2023 due to a combination of COVID for both my wife and myself at the beginning of the year. We had to cancel many trips and also had KLM cancel 3 trips that we were unable to reschedule. MQM’s were not the issue. I ended 2022 with over 520,000 MQMs. When I realized that I would be unable to requalify as a DM for 2023 I decided to requalify in January 2023 for the 2024 Medallion Year which would give me the DM status for 2023 as well, minus a year of Choice Benefits which was acceptable to me. In August 2022 I booked two partner trips for January 2023 and with the associated repositioning flights, found that they would give me almost 13,000 MQD. The remaining ~2,000+ MQD could easily be acquired with a couple of overpriced award tickets. Since I didn’t want to spend a lot of time to get the trips done that would get me the remaining MQDs I looked for the quickest trips for the highest cost. I decided to do Award trips since SkyMiles don’t mean much to us and found MSY-ATL-MSY trips for around 90,000 - 100,000 miles each in F. Also, since it was January I wanted to protect myself against weather problems and that seemed to be the best option. I booked 4 trips with 2 back to back trips on each day which would give me the additional MQD’s with a small cushion is case there was a problem with a trip.

As noted above, the DM desk agent I spoke sent an email to the SkyMiles desk and did not speak with them.