I am not advocating for a change to the change, but someone can have an AX spend that is multiples of the $25K, and a MQD spend in excess of $12.5K, but they are not a sufficiently high value customer to warrant DM status?

I would think that the highest value customer is the one that puts the most cash in the DL till (by total DL spend and AX kickback to DL) for the least amount of miles spent on a plane (thus freeing up seats for other ticket purchasers). :D

In that case the MQM requirement becomes irrelevant or, at least, counterproductive. :D:D

This is a great example of how this change really does nothing.

Probably same here. Guess I can try to book some flights before March, however if I have to change them I'd suspect that may put the date into the reduced earn area.

Unless M fares drop substantially, thats just another reason that SWUs suck.

70K air miles on $2.5K of spend on DL is not easy to do. DL wants to know where you fly so they can change the routing rules.

I guess they'll be offering MQDs for sale too in late 2014. Just think of it, you don't have to take any extra time to fly on a mileage run, just buy those MQDs you need to get you up to the status you deserve! :D

I just wonder how much they'll charge for MQDs.

Another idea just join the Skymiles automatic MQD deposit program! It will probably go something like this

If you agree to have $100 automatically transferred from your bank account to Delta Airlines each month and earn 25k MQMs in 2014, you will be awarded Silver Medallion status for 2015, regardless of the amount you actually spend on your real tickets.

If you agree to have $200 automatically transferred from your bank account to Delta Airlines each month and earn 50k MQMs in 2014, you will be awarded Silver Medallion status for 2015.

There could be other options where you agree to have a larger monthly amount withdrawn from your account and in turn are given a lower MQM threshold to qualify on, such as having $150 withdrawn each month and flying 15k miles to get Silver status.

Oh what possibilities this opens up!

Good points, all. I think the MQM remains because they do want to reward the road warrior. I think the DL vs AX till question is the fascinating one. Clearly DL and AX have a complex relationship and this manifests how important AX is to DL, because it is a relatively easy threshold to meet.

I am in the exact same boat. I did get to put the points feature at my cost on my corporate Amex (at my cost).

Also my mortgage company doesn't take Amex and that is my biggest bill each month. Getting the $25k on my Delta card may not happen. Good news is that I hope to be over the $12.5k Delta spend each year on the corp travel.

Could it be that DL management recognized the potential for the rollover MQM liability to balloon like the cumulative FF mile liability, and found this to be the most effective way of removing the liability from the books.

Well, 500K rollover MQMs and $2500 spend per year buys a lot of years of FO.

Our understanding is the same. However, before I drop 10K on two M fare tickets to Asia, I sure would like DL to confirm that this 3/1 rule only applies to purchases. Would hate to have them come back later and say, "What we meant was you had to fly by 3/1 to get the bonus miles. Sorry for the confusion. Here are some SkyMiles to make amends."

I just looked more carefully at the charts for those partners... all of them are slashed substantially as well, generally to the tune of 50% for coach tickets and 100% max for biz tickets.

Czech airlines and Aeroflot got wacked as well.

The earnings chart clearly says purchased for DL tickets. I'm unclear what further confirmation you are waiting for. Take a screenshot if you want to be safe.

For those of you who think you're safe from the MQD requirements, but only marginally, pay really close attention to Delta's fine print: taxes and fees don't count.

Fortunately, it sounds like YQ/YR surcharges do count toward Delta spend, but this isn't explicitly clarified - a great candidate for addition to the FAQ.

As an example of how bad this could be: I booked a ticket to Dublin yesterday where I spent $740, and of that total ticket price only $173 was listed as "Fare". The rest, $567.50, was listed as "Taxes and carrier-imposed fees". (Of that, $428 was YR and the remaining $140 was government taxes.) So on this ticket, only 80% of the ticket price counts as MQD (and only 23.3% of the price is "fare", so if YQ/YR doesn't count, we're in for a world of hurt.)

Even full fare business class travelers may be unpleasantly surprised: the UK imposes a $200/ticket sin tax on business class, for example, and this is true in many other destinations as well. If you have a negotiated corporate fare for business tickets, you may find that a larger percentage of that price is taxes than you think.

I appreciate that Delta included an opt-out for those of us who fly primarily on low cost leisure tickets (the Amex exemption). I do feel like I've been a valuable customer for Delta: as discussed ad nauseum in the other thread, while I pay much less for my tickets, I almost always take a seat that would otherwise go empty, so I'm an important part of the revenue equation too. And it keeps me loyal for when those $2500 last minute transpacs to China come up at work. :)

I would say that the following (from the FAQ) qualifies as "explicitly clarified".

I'm not too worried about that... I think its pretty clear that it has to be booked before March. However, my big question is about that original ticketing date... if I change my flight later, does that mean it is now into the no bonus crap pile? Or, how about if I'm using an SWU that doesn't clear until after March and the ticket gets reissued?

I do expect to see corresponding program improvements to justify the increased requirements, by the way. Delta miles are already some of the least valuable/hardest to use, and international upgrades are hard to come by. Improvements to one or both of those areas would help take some of the frustration away from the increased bookkeeping requirements the new MQD rules impose on travelers.

(On the other hand, if we move to fare based award ticket redemption as the only option, I'm out. On that note, hmm, I really should park my miles in a refundable award ticket to somewhere I want to go as insurance against program changes...)