Originally Posted by
bsagator
As a publicly traded company, is Delta required to show that their Diamond medallion members "almost doubled"? I find it very hard to believe that US based customers moved up to Diamond from Platinum during the pandemic. Platinum doubling, for sure with rollover. But I wouldn't be surprised to see that the vast majority of new Diamonds during the pandemic were from overseas customers. I don't know anyone that increased their flying during the pandemic to move up to a Diamond.
I am a first year Diamond this year, after being a first time Platinum the year before. Rollover helped get me platinum for 2022, and international work travel in 2022, along with personal travel, got me to Diamond in 2023. I was promoted to a job with more travel required in 2020 (though the travel didn’t actually start until 2021 for obvious reasons!). The point is that with rollover, travel didn’t actually have to start to increase until 2022, when it actually did for many. 2022 was a very heavy travel year in general, particularly in premium cabins. A gold that spent $30K a year on a Delta Reserve in 2020 and 2021, and flew in 2021 and particularly 2022, could pretty easily reach Diamond with some paid J in 2022 - why is likely why Delta increased MQD requirements this year .