DL announced all of this now to give UA 6-8 weeks to respond. If UA's seeing an uptick in status matches from DL, and doesn't have to worry about its elites bolting to DL, why wouldn't UA go to 40k (30k with PQF, since they're the only ones with PQF)?

DL not announcing the benefits being accorded to Diamond/Platinum in turn allows them to see what UA does around requirements: if it's 30k-plus for same old 1K (with GS presumably increasing similarly), then DL doesn't really have to sweeten the pot (remember that historically, DM generally had 25% higher requirements than 1K (and EXP)... 35k vs. 30k isn't out of line). If UA doesn't increase, then DL will make PM for 2025 something more like old-DM-light and make DM for 2025 much more like GS/CK.

The thought occurred to me last night: basically the entire history of frequent flyer programs has been in a bond bull market: this is the first overall bear market for bonds since the CAB was regulating. With fuel and labor costs rising while there's a shortage of planes (pandemic accelerated retirements, 777x, GTF...), could we see airlines respond to any downturn by cutting routes and capacity to defend prices (effectively settling into a pattern of not really trying to compete except on the highest-volume/value routes: CAB without the regulation)? AA has basically retreated from every market they share with UA/DL. DL going pure spend is (modulo small business owners) in some sense also a retreat to the hubs. Frontier is admitting that what they're doing doesn't work, Spirit is likely ending up as part of B6 (how much B6 gives up is the question). Allegiant is going to be Allegiant.