In this action, DL is preventing a lawsuit over aggressive MQM promotion in the past (evidenced by the hawking of AMEX cards in the gate areas for years) and the need to rapidly dispose of MQM's for DL's own benefit. It was a cancer that they caused.

The people with the most MQM's are likely...
1. Long time frequent fliers... give them a bump up in their MM status. That will pacify them. Costs DL next to nothing.
2. High MQM rollover CC mega-users... give them "status" for longer and prevent those miles from becoming RDM's. Pacify those people and even save $$ in the long-run since RDM's cost more than "status", since it keeps the customer paying cash for more routes in the future because they feel "special" for longer.

Loosening/delaying the SC visit restrictions on the DL AMEX cards had to be done to stop the hemorrhage of AMEX spend that they had to be seeing over the past month. That hemorrhage was going to destroy Q4 results and they needed to do something now to stop that pending disaster for next earnings quarter.

What is apparent here is that under no circumstances will they budge on qualifying for status in the future. It's MQD's... period.

Everything they did in this rollback is to keep the ranks of elites swollen, which devalues elite status longer, but has the least impact on cash flow for DL. But it pacifies the elites enough to prevent revolt, lawsuits and free agency. They must be grinning ear to ear reading this board today. Everyone is so gosh darn happy. They let us eat cake, and we scarfed it down with plenty of frosting on our faces.

It appears DL knows their customer very well after all and carved the easiest way out. Just remember, that elite status for longer that you are so happy about just got massively devalued.