I just got this email 20min ago and came online, so if some of these comments are reposts I apologize.
First, for everybody wondering regarding living in the UK or other places and using a US Based card... The site says
So if your address is already a non-US address, it's fine. Certain "Change of address"es (ie. people suddenly "moving" other places) may trigger investigation.

In regards to qualifying for GM or PM, I think this is worse for international traveler. For example, one RT from say BUF-DTW-CDG/AMS-DEL will get approximately 17,000 MQM and cost (for the majority of the year) under $1,300. Three of these trips will qualify for GM, and cost approx $3,900. Five of these trips will net 85k miles and PM, and cost $6,500. Still a grand below the threshold in both situations. Add to this mileage runs, and a bigger issue.

Personally, my address has been non-US for years so it doesn't affect me, YET. Definitely a slippery slope for Delta, even more so with the 49% buyout of Virgin America.

My take on the exemption for non-US addresses is that most KL/AF/DL tickets issued from the US are 006 codes therefore "Delta stock". Not including taxes, however, doesn't fare well either. The $1,296 RT in May for the BUF-DTW-AMS-DEL routing, for example, includes $177 of government imposed taxes and fees. So now we're at $1,119 RT for 17k miles. 3 Trips therefore means $3,357, and 5 trips is $5,595.

So really... the thresholds in some of these cases in terms of spending, if one were to spend the same amounts required currently one could qualify for PM instead of the current GM and just below DM mileage requirements with the future PM spending requirements.

As a Europe-based GM, the changes to partner MQM earnings bother me the most. 75% MQM in J on some partner airlines, that's ridiculous! I held out with Skyteam after moving back to Europe after a couple of years in the US, but this will likely push me over to Star Alliance.

One nuance that might be worth commenting on would be how many of your MQMs are "consumed" if you don't hit the threshold. Consider the following scenario: I end 2014 with 125k MQMs, but only enough spend to qualify as PM.

Do I keep 50k miles as rollover, or do the MQMs reset as if the spend doesn't count?

Edit: The answer is 50k miles roll over.

I've looked at this, and it certainly isn't as bad as it could be. It will be seriously hard to earn platinum status without $7,500 spend. Sure, its 10 cents a mile, but unless you do nothing but international purpose-built mileage runs, you will hit it. Even those just buying advance domestic fares for weekly travel are likely to be real close, although they're average might be closer to 8 cents and a little under. Throw a couple typical last minute business tickets into the otherwise leisure mix, and it's a non-issue.

The ways of earning status without the travel spend (AMEX) are also a non issue. Simply put, those earning this status via spend via AMEX, will be exempt from these restrictions anyways.

I've got to think, the most affected is probably the FO that got their status from 1 or two round trip distance flights in a cheap/medium fare class.

I can only hope they will offer a tool or other instrumentation to let you see your MQD spend for the current and previous years, for reference and tracking purposes.

I am always interested in a good read. :)

60k in Amex spending has got to account for the brunt on your miles then. Unfortunately Amex and I are not on good term so I may have to just to depend on insane amounts of business travel to keep my status.

Bummer as I was counting on those rollover miles to keep me sitting pretty once I wised up and got a job that includes a social and family life... :p

I'm confused. The criteria for MQMs hasn't changed, only the tier qualification.

Shouldn't all MQM's above GM/PM/DM thresholds roll over?

I have to purchase my flights through Carlson Wagonlit using a centralized corporate credit card (not my own). Do I lose the benefit of accruing MQDs?

I can't imagine that this will create any more ill will than the opaque earnings on codeshares among *A carriers.

Can someone clarify something for me. If you travel for work and your company pays for the ticket does that count toward your MQD? If it doesn't then this is the best news to ever come out of Delta! I pay for all my travel out of my own pocket so this could potentially be great news.

I don't get all the whining in here. The changes are really easy to understand. Basically you need to spend $100 for every 1000 miles flown - not hard to do. They're just weeding out the cheaters who get medallion status without any flying - which I am perfectly OK with.

The more I look at it, the easier it is to spend $25k on an Amex. If you charge utilities, groceries, insurance, and taxes to the card, $25k is really easy. There are some charges associated with charging taxes to a credit card, but they are doable if the reward you get from the card spend is good enough.

Return of the .5LUT fares!
 

I love the way Delta throws in the "oh ... just one more thing" paragraph buried towards the bottom:
Those of us old folks here on the board remember Delta's last ill-faded attempt to reduce mileage credit on "certain select" (i.e. discounted) fares. They offered half credit on L, U and T fare classes, which were then fondly referred to on these boards as .5LUT fares.

Just another story from the annals of FlyerTalk history! :D

Me too. I ran into a guy on a flight I recognized from the NWA days last week and we were recapping how good NWA was to us. Most of my NWA days I was Gold, and I was upgraded 90% of the time. Gold actually meant something in that program. We're a far cry from that in SkyMiles.

I'm Plat for Delta now and that flight we had this conversation on was the first time in 8 segments I had been upgraded. Pretty sad.

I'm mostly welcoming the changes DL has announced today because there are far too many people in the program making the upgrade system a joke, although my biggest issues are:

There should be an MQD only spend amount that gets you to Elite levels. For example, I would guess even though I only hit Plat this year at 80K miles, I easily exceeded the 12.5K spend between business and personal travel. I think there should be some threshold if you hit in MQD's you get to qualify. You would think Delta would want to award people that spend as much money with them in the fewest amount of flights. That's what they've done with the MQM bonuses for higher fare types... you'd think they would find an equivalent in MQD's. That's my biggest complaint at this point.

I don't like the M fare changes on DL. The only time I buy an M fare is to use an SWU or miles to upgrade. These are already insanely expensive. The extra 50% took the pain out of shelling much more money out to use the benefits I earned. Very annoying. It reduces not only the value of the SWU's, but also the overall value of miles for me. I only use miles on me for upgrades. Never award tickets. I'd rather buy my leisure travel tickets and upgrade with miles to get MQM (and now MQD's) for the future year. So, this move really devalues the program for my personal travel... I hope that Delta reconsiders this, or allows SWU/mileage upgrades on fares lower than M (at least for the higher level elites)

It sounds like for people who fly internationally that use partners, those partnerships are severely devalued. It doesn't impact me much, but I'm sure many are furious over those changes.

It's pretty uncommon (but not unheard of) for a R/T flight to BKK to cost $2100+.

Nothing to do with this thread but the old stupid boiling frog story that Mr Gore made popular drives me nuts... because it is NOT true.

Frog ain't that dumb....