:)

Any bets that Delta will make MQDs available for purchase in December of 2014?

Except for the MQM earning on M fares and any partner flights which take effect on 3/1/13

Hopefully, in 2013 they will post on the profile page what your spend is for the year so that you can trend for a year before it goes live.

Aubrey...if they can't or they aren't meeting the spending requirement, they are hard-pressed to argue that they are a benefit to DL.

You'll probably just be able to buy them at a 1:1 rate. Need 2,000 MQD? That'll be $2,000 please. Forget donating to charity, donate to DL.

That is entirely possible. I was just going by what was written and what was written was definitely that only 006 stock tickets, without qualification of that statement. If what you describe is what was meant to be said, then I encourage java to go back and edit his post.

I'm just tired of the hyperbole and the way it results in misunderstandings and misinformation for those that might pop in. People should be careful about their language when making declarative statements like java's.

What an absolutely baseless assumption. Many of us use corporate cards for most of our travel, and my mortgage company, car loan company and neighborhood gas station do not take AmEx. Other than those things, I don't spend anywhere near $25k/year, nor could I possible even think of being that wasteful.

Having money and spending money are two very different things. People who appreciate the difference will likely not have $25k/year charge card spends without business travel, mortgage or car note payments.

Makes one wonder what the exchange rate will be between USD and MQD...

:D:D

For me, 2012 consisted of 14 ticket purchases totalling $8,300, or about $590 on average. Flew less than 50k last year, but made gold w/rollover. Should easily meet the MQD threshhold.

That being said, this is pretty confusing.

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced the end goal here is not about treating "our best customers" better, or rewarding higher end spenders -- it's about driving incremental revenue from the lower spenders (not necessarily getting rid of them).

• If you buy paid F/J, you most likely don't care.
• If you buy cheapest available on any carrier, you most likely don't care.
• And furthermore, your extra purchases (EC, etc) don't count.
• If you're a high spend low elite (eg: FO on last minute tickets), DL is doing nothing for you. Even if you posit that there are fewer elites ahead of you on the UG list, you're still subject to FCM draining V/Z inventory and you still don't get services like SkyPriority.

Perhaps if you only ever buy DL coded flights. Half of my paid J travel last year was on AF coded flights, meaning about 10k of MQM with $0 MQD equivalent even though they were JV flights.

It doesn't.

More like you already generate sufficient cash, DL doesn't need to incentivize you.

So at the end of the day, while I could requalify for DM under the new plan, I'm going to put exactly 0 effort into making sure that I do.

I think they just want to make money. I can't fault them for that.
With that said, if they suddenly changed CC companies we'd all be up s$@t creek.

When you get down to it, this isn't a huge deal for many of us.

Can't wait to see the First Class mileage runs ;-)

OUCH, not including the taxes is a major obstacle. A quick look at some past reservations show around 13%-16% of the fare is taxes. That means that we will need closer to $0.12 per MQM to meet the spending thresholds.

Total spend for me will actually need to be around:
$2,900
$5,900
$8,800
$15,000

Without doing mileage runs and flying a mix of low and mid level fares last year, I hit DM with about $10k in spend. It also included two AS flights (to HI and SEA), so take those out and I would have barely qualified for PM.

Would be really nice if Dwayne could let us know the reasoning behind reducing M class earnings... hopefully they will be reducing international M fares to make SWU use more in line iwth the other airlines.

Agreed, but for BIS travelers who also have benefit to DL, although probably less benefit than the Amex spenders.

For me, it is, unfortunately, not including change fees that is upsetting. I probably do $3k in change fees per year. (2 changes per month, not including those where DL has waived the change.)

If history is any indication, this will not be announced anywhere.