Have you read this thread? Internal details about a multi-phase/multi-faceted change to the SkyMiles program have been copy/pasted here and for one facet there's a job opportunity posted. I think its safe to say we're out of rumor mode in relation to this.

It also does not appear likely this will be tacked on to the existing mileage earning abilities-- Note the verbiage used; "from" and "to".

1) The amount of miles and MQM's that one earns IS IN FACT determined by fare paid. A YBM or Biz or F ticket earns 150%, while other earn 100%. I can in fact envision them knocking LU and T fares down to 75% or 50%, as this would be in tune with MANY airlines around the World, not just AFKL as stated by some above, but pretty much all European, many Middle Eastern and many Asian programs.

2) If they make an additional way to earn through status, without taking away the current ways then I in fact have no problem with this. So if it were 125k, or 100 segments (or whatever) or $20k, that would be fine and if one looks at Hilton, they in fact have three possible ways to earn, which is either 100k base points ($10k spend), 60 nights or 28 stays. Quite frankly I have sat there in September of a given year having spent quite a lot of Delta for the year, been 5000 miles short and wondered about the silliness that I would have to spend $300 on a fare to requalify, when my last fare was $6000 and earned me the same or fewer points.

3) I do not think that they will do anything drastic to scare off much of their members, but you may find that if you are exclusively a LUT flier that gets up "high" every year, that it may take more flying to get back there.

I am interpreting Fare Based Award Ticket Redemption (FBATR) to mean that, the higher the cost of a purchased ticket, the more mileage required to redeem an award ticket.

So, with inflation and rising ticket prices (if the airlines can continue to cooperate with the capacity cuts) each year it will take more and more miles to make the same award trip.

I don't anticipate that the distance between PHL and ATL will increase accordingly (Oh, right, we are going away from miles).

"decreasing liability related to unused award miles" means making the miles you currently have worth less.

Perhaps they'll tells us that "old miles will always be old miles." Oh, wait, they already did that once, didn't they? And how long was that promise kept?

This wont happen as much as some members here want it to be based on fare type, some other will not like it.

I am against it, if this happens I will just look into better oprions for me.

This seems about right to me, but who knows what DL has in mind.

DL Skymiles 2012: The True March Madness

These would certainly be easier to swallow (though I would take them really hard as a DM who purchases mostly LUT fares 4-6 weeks in advance). However, I seriously doubt that this would fit with the descriptions from earlier in the thread. I am thinking of something closer to WN's new program, where you have three different levels to earning points and three different levels to redeem points, but every single point your redeem is 100% tied to revenue.

Flight A is $100 = 6,000 points
Flight B is $101 = 6,060 points
Flight C is $150 = 9,000 points
Flight B is $400 but only available at the Business Select rate = 48,000 points

Granted these points are based on WN's program, but I could see DL adopting something similar. If they lead the charge among the legacy carriers in implementing this type of FFP, there are some sad weeks and months ahead for us "gamers"...

I will say that I made a strategic call to my financial manager to guage his thoughts on dumping some of my DL stock this afternoon after following this thread. I could seriously forsee high level elites jumping ship from DL to another airline and the profit margin of the company taking a nose dive.

The question, I guess, is how does DL define DM, PM, GM, FO by spending? Some DMs I know spend very little by buying in advance and flying low fare price routes. Others fly very costly routes at high fares. Gonna be interesting to see what happens!

diamonds who fly every week on LUT fares are not Delta's best customers
In fact they take upgrades away from folks who are better customers

I've said it before that you can become Diamond and spend less than $10,000 dollars a year and you can spend $100,000 and not be diamond

The current system is crazy, it doesn't drive revenue and rewards frequent flyers not profitable customers ---its the wrong customers from Delta's view

Just like FCM ---it's not about the $39 transcontinental upgrade revenue, it's that last minute flyers buying b or y fares can get a first class seat on delta and coach on their competitors

FCM drives folks to buy delta tickets not their competitors

If delta has revenue tiers, then they would truely be rewarding their best customers from their stock holder perspective. A small percentage may leave but where will you go? The high fare folks won't leave, they will migrate to delta. If You could buy one round trip on delta and get gold by spending $14000 on this single ticket, then youd be more likely to choose delta

Nope.:D

As for Job Openings and Changes to the Program, reminds me of this thread Program Tier 5 Coming Soon? Interesting public DL job opening.

Where the discussion surrounded the job opening related to: Most notably, the candidate will be the loyalty project manager for developing a new program tier. This includes: marketing, strategy, analytics, technology, customer service, and partner relationship management. The position will require extensive work with IT, ACS, Reservations, and other business units.

I wonder if there will be a way for you to easily determine where you stand against tiers or a goal/reward system. I know where I am in relation to the current program, and can strategize to take the fullest advantage of it... I'll connect here because there's a SkyTeam lounge, or maximize an international route's domestic legs because I know I'm likely to sit up front domestic, but in the back international (save the high fare or opup).

It'd be informational to me to show me where I'd stand in a new system for my previous years of flying. Sometimes I have to fly high fares for booking close in, sometimes I pay low fares-- but these are relevant on the fare bucket scale not a revenue only based scale. When we say that flyers are spending $10k or $100k, it still could be LUTs with a very high volume. Using a Mile structure that's based in any way on fare amount and not on profitability seems to continue the ambiguity. This would include mileage flown at 150% like YBMs today.

It seems more likely that fare bucket, and therefore profitability relative to other passengers on the same flight and that route's competitors will drive whatever valuation we'll have now for earning miles.

From the redemption side, it looks like we're headed for that same system revamp. Will be interesting to see if given this leak we should be booking flights now as PM/DM and redepositing if it's not so bad.

There are two separate questions here:

Earning - does this have a net effect on how points are earned? This seems likely - HVCs will earn more and lower fares will earn less. I predict this drives some lower tier elites away similar to how loss of E+ has driven some UA flyers away but will ultimately prove to attract some higher yielding fares. I don't think the net effect here is significant due to competitive situation.

Redemption - the big potential change is if redemption is impacted. In this case some HVCs that book J travel to Europe or Japan will hate this change and switch very fast to star or one world. It sounds as though this may not be included in first phase but to me this is big potential change as this was the only way you could reliably get a better than 1-2 cent return on miles to places I like to travel to. Having said that, the decreased availability of low J awards in recent years has nearly driven me away so I expect some will stick with DL even in this scenario. I doubt domestic redeemers will be significantly impacted even if they go this route.

Which is precisely why SM is a FREQUENT FLYER program and not a high value customer program. In effect, to make the system revenue driven, it is no longer a frequent flyer program and is now a pay-to-play program. But, people sign up for FF programs, they don't sign up for pay-to-play programs unless they've got serious bucks to spend on plane tix which is the precise market, in many ways, that DL Private Jets cater to. As a result of this type of change, my guess is that we will see a reduction in the number of new SM members with this type of program as well. What's the benefit to the average joe flyer who takes 1-2 trips per year and hopes that with non-expiring SMs that over time, he'll be able to trade those SMs in for an award trip? Now you've discouraged that person from signing up and paying for a ticket that costs hundreds more than the low cost carrier where he also gets free bags(cough, WN). This could be deadly just here in ATL alone with WN moving in and trying to make a name for themselves.

PLEASE ANSWER THIS FOR ME

EVERYONE on FT claims to be a high-value customer, yet nobody wants a fare-based system? If you REALLY were half as valuable to DL as you claim, it would seem that a fare-based system would FINALLY acknowledge your contribution, wouldn't it?

Hopefully this leak accelerates the communication timeline for them. If its already hammered out, just send now if you're waiting for some arbitrary date. End the speculation and let us all get back to our lives... Which for me includes booking a lot of travel.

I'm not a high value customer, I know that.
On AA I buy N, O, Q fares, on AC I buy T, L, K fares, and on CX I buy V, L fares.
(Those are equivalent to DL sLUT fares)