JayTeaBee

Hi everyone, I’m new to the game and FT so I guess this is my way of saying hello! I feel like this is a great time to be a n00b because I’m not coming in with any preconceived notions of what to expect or how things “used to work in the golden days”. I’ve done a fair bit of research and developed a strategy but after finding all you maniac’s here at FT I thought I’d post and let you pick apart my plan/tell me where I’m going wrong or maybe get some reassurance I’m not totally crazy.

Background: I’ve always been into credit card points. In fact one of my first jobs was selling credit cards over the phone for MBNA (don’t hate!) Needless to say I knew and have known the ins and outs of points programs. We have mostly leveraged BofA for the past 10 years gaining 1.5x points and mostly electing cash back awards (100k points = 1k$ etc). I’m a married casual traveler with some work travel mixed in but normally fly 25k or less miles every year (25k being on the heavy side however we hope to do more and more). In the past I have not married myself to any particular airline, always went with price and schedule. We fly coach as we can’t afford to book 1st/business class.

Goal – Acquire & maintain status with Delta Airlines to facilitate for a more luxurious travel experience.

Because of the lack of flying I have elected to pay the 195$ annual fee for the American Express Platinum Skymiles card. Many of you are familiar with the benefits. Because I started later than I should have in 2014 I went with the Platinum card in hopes I can reach the 50k spend threshold for the full bonus of 20k MQM. I plan to upgrade to the Delta Reserve card at the end of the year which comes with a heftier $450 annual fee but also more benefits, one of them being the BOGO 1st class domestic voucher which could be our first shot ever at flying up front. I can’t seem to find a good mastercad/visa solution to earn Skymiles. Diners Club Mastercard looks good (95$ fee) but they are not taking applications. Sadly there are still people who don’t take Amex.

Now I’m talking nearly $450 in annual fee’s which, in theory, should pay for themselves each year as long as I’m charging 45k+ (Yes, I’ve read about manufactured spending which is quite intriguing but I’m not sure I want to go down that road). However another way I could look at would be to say now I’m spending 450$ a year to get nothing except potential future benefits whereas before each year I would have at least 1k added to my pocket for 0 cost.

Long story short the real strategy is to bank as many skymiles points I can get my hands on. I recently flew BOS>LAX>SYD in Economy Comfort which was surprisingly not horrible. My company (yes this was Business on OPM as you might say ) paid around 2500$ for my ticket and I noticed business class was around 12k for the same ticket. YIKES. Incidentally my company uses a travel agent who gets bulk or opaque tickets so sadly I will have to wait until my 25k spend on Amex hits to make Silver as I got no MQD’s for this trip. That should happen before my next flight to Vegas in September. So my long term plan would be to bank skymiles and cash them in for Business Class long haul international flights like Australia, maybe Asia, and maybe even Europe. Let’s say I even have to pay a peak redemption award level to SYD, 350k points per person round trip. So that’s 700k points for my wife & I which, to me, is around a 7k value. The same two tickets retail are 12k a pop so there seems to be a significant value here. Granted 700k is a load of points to bank up but it is certainly possible with time and dedication, and hopefully we wouldn’t be talking about the peak award level either, just a worst case example if the timing was off.

Medallion status is amazing and I’m on target to become Gold by the end of this year. Any “bumps” on domestic or Caribbean flights would be an added benefit that I could only dream about at this time. I normally fly out of PWM or BOS. From everything I’ve read International Long Haul upgrades are pretty much gone. It sounds like if you book in the 3 highest fares (BYM?) then you at least have the option of attempting to upgrade at the gate for 25k miles. Is there any other way around this to get an upgrade on a long haul intl flight? What do they do if there are unsold seats? I figure given my strategy we’ll still need to fly coach to Aus/Asia once a year to maintain a decent status and continue banking points. I am somewhat concerned that if I maintain gold and we fly 25k+ miles my wife could attain silver status and “drag us down” from an upgrade priority perspective on future domestic flights in that scenario, though. Mileage runs intrigue me but it seems they may be a thing of the past with the changes to the program in 2015.

Anyway as you can see I’m Skymiles crazy and want you to tell me if you think it’s a good thing or a bad thing. I’m on the Amex. I’m on the Skymiles dining, I’m 4 dines away from getting VIP status aka 5x points on all my dining. Skymall online portal to anything/everything to earn points when shopping online. I need miles lol. Anyway, I’m completely new but have really dove in deep and FT seems to be the place to be to get some help and ask some questions (or maybe be flamed lol). Thanks for reading! (tl;dr)

orca15

They make you wait 13 months before letting you "upgrade" a card.

Alternate plan- if you have ANYTHING you can consider a business (eBay?) get the Business AMEX along with the personal for a double dose of sign up miles. When you get to the point you can upgrade, get some more MQMs doing that and cancel the business. They refund the annual fee pro rata.

Oh, and pretty good plan for a n00b.

SuperG1955

Welcome!

DL Plat AMEX pretty much gives you all of the benefits of FO except upgrades, which will vary depending on the routes, days, and times you fly. It can give you 20k MQM towards status AND 20K RDM if you spend $50K and also gives you the MQD waiver towards status. The RDM value depends on how you use and value them. The minimum value is $.01 each since that's what delta will credit you on a PWM basis. Therefore, 20K RDM is worth a minimum of $200 which is greater than the cost of the card - IF YOU SPEND $50K. You should also look for sign up RDM bonuses.

The DL Reserve adds Club Membership and increases MQM and RDM earning potential to 30K for a $60K spend putting the minimum value at $300 for a $450 card. This guarantees FO status and gives you INDIVIDUAL Club access, again assuming that you make the $60K spend. If you can get $0.15 per RDM, you're break even.

Your $, your choices based on what's important.

I believe that most of us look to average at least $.02 / RDM which makes either card worthwhile, assuming you can make the spend. RDM value should go up next year when the $ based earnings kick in.

Unless you spend a lot, you will probably have to reduce or eliminate the spend on other card(s) and need to factor those lost benefits into the $ equation.

MSPeconomist

Has the OP looked at the changes to the DL FF program starting in 2015? This should be part of the long term plan.

As someone has already pointed out, you cannot "upgrade" to the Reserve card until you ahve held your current DL AmEx card for a full year. This is a relatively new government consumer protection regulation.

Also, while a BE RT to SYD might have cost $12K for your dates at the time your ticket was purchased, there are generally lower fares in advance. In addition, DL's Virgin partner sometimes has lower business class fares to Australia.

JayTeaBee

I was not aware I had to wait 13 months to upgrade to the reserve card. That's some solid information right there, thank you. I do have a side business that I could open a business account with. Making a 60k spend in a year will not be a problem which is why I target the Reserve however I did not make this move until April of this year and 60k is pushing it which is why I went Platinum with plan to upgrade. I still need to hit 50k this year on the plat which will be close but I can do it. Making the spend's on two cards isn't possible right now but I suppose I could do it for the bonuses. For the plat I got a 35k miles bonus & a 5k mqm bonus for spending 1k in the first 3 months. Oddly enough right now the 5k mqm's came through as well as 19,500 miles not the total 35k. I'm waiting for my first statement to close before I worry too much about it. I guess my plan can still move forward but I'll have to open a business Reserve card for 2015 to make that move.

I have looked at the changes to the DL FF flyer in 2015 and I think for me it will be about the same unless I really start logging some long miles (AUS/ASIA etc). Getting at least gold for 2015 for the advanced multiplier is part of the plan as well.

MSPecononnmist, I'm curious to know what a good low ballpark figure would be for advanced booked BE travel RT to SYD?

mnbp

Suggest playing around with this search tool - nice graphs of price changes over time.
http://www.google.com/flights/#searc...6;sc=b;a=DL,VA

HongKonger

Then you're going to be disappointed. Status with DL or any airline generally doesn't get you a more luxurious travel experience. There are perks that come with the highest status, yes, but in general if you want what most people would consider a luxurious travel experience, the way to get this is by paying for it, i.e. paying for business class tickets, accessing actually good lounges like Amex lounges by paying for them or by flying foreign carriers that have good first class lounges, paying for priority travel services available at some airports, etc.

JayTeaBee

Good call, thank you. Even the lowest fares still seem out of reach.

I think my attitude can help a lot to squash any disappointment but time will tell. Right now I fly coach, have no lounge access, and get no benefits from my travel. The simple fact is I can't afford to pay for 1st class so to even have the remote potential of being upgraded here or there is valuable and would increase my overall travel experience. I'm going with the "I'll believe it when I see it" mentality and am not kidding myself on thinking FO or even Gold is going to change much. But maybe it does one time. That's one time it never would have happened and in the meantime I'm banking points like a madman to finally able to book what I want on some dream trips.

keeton

Are you sure? DL is selling discounted F seats that are sometimes priced only slightly (e.g. $100-$300) above the current coach price and if you are doing last minute bookings, sometimes the coach price will be _greater_ than the discounted F (if it is available). Search here for "first class monetization" (FCM) to see how DL is aggressively selling F to the dismay of elite flyers expecting a free upgrade.

yohanson

I suggest a mileage or vacation run to rack up those miles quickly.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/mileage-run-deals-372/

JayTeaBee

I guess I'll have to research this further. In most situations I book my travel well in advance. Thank you.


This is an intriguing idea and I've looked around there to see if there is anything I could do. I've also been playing with the muticity search alot on dl's website. Good times....

gooselee

Welcome!

Many people say the above about the Amex cards, but I strongly disagree. Access to preferred seats (including Economy Comfort at check in) and better IRROPS treatment are two very meaningful benefits that no Amex card will get you. The 25% bonus on RDM is also useful if you are looking to collect RDMs.

That said, there is still excellent value in the DL Plat and Reserve cards. The Plat also comes with a coach companion certificate that can have good value (again, others have varied experiences but I have always been able to use mine easily and in ways that more than cover the AF of the card).

Since you are very adept at researching these things on your own, definitely do the value judgments based on what you value most. Before I had any status anywhere, I found that a combination of the unbranded Amex Plat charge card and the DL platinum amex made a very good combo to improve my travel experience, and were well worth the $600 combined AF. Particularly if you are just beginning to build status and are starting to stick with one airline, the Amex Plat charge card can help since you can use the $200 credit to buy things like EC that will become free once you have status. Other things like hotel/car status and GE rebate provide additional value, and you get DL lounge access when flying DL.

cottonpatch

+1

FCM has me either buying FC or carefully selecting choice Y seats. The chase for status is over for me.

sethb

Also except medallion Security Theater lines (in some airports, FO gets that).

JayTeaBee

Thanks for all the solid info. I've been reading about First Class Monetization here on FT in the "definitive thread" however I'm still not 100% sure how it works or how one would find a comparable discount F fare. I still have plenty of reading to do but if anyone wants to point me in the right direction that would be great. In my experience, and again, I'm booking most of my travel far in advance, the differences between economy & FC are pretty major (the exception I've noticed is Caribbean tickets. We goto Jamaica a lot and have noticed FC is around 2x the price of Economy which is one of the lowest delta's I've noticed).

For me I still feel there is value in "chasing status" but it may be a year or two before I'd ever really see a benefit due to my limited flying. Time will tell.