Take Diamond -- Or Plat + 45k rollover?
 

I'm very close to making DM, but I'm on the fence as to whether it's worth it. Are the extra benefits (SC + extra choice) worth the loss of rollover miles should I not know if I'll need them or not to make platinum next year?

Quite frankly, I fly out of a primarily SLC and sometimes MSP feeder city, and platinum seems to be a guaranteed upgrade (I don't fly to ATL or JFK).

It depends on your expected flying next year. If you expect to do at least 75K next year then I would go for DM. The upgrade priority will help if you fly that much, as will the SC membership, and based on your flying you'll get at least Plat for 2012 without the help of the rollover miles.

Or you might be like me. My DL flying next year is much more uncertain. So I will drop from DM to PM but have about 40K to roll over. Even if my DL travel is way down I should be able to make up the remainder to earn Plat again. And if my DL travel is way down I won't be as concerned about upgrade priority, etc.

In this post I put the value of DM over PM at $800.

I think a lot of us are in this situation, uncertainty about future DL flying next year, and are coming to this conclusion...better to roll over as much as possible but stay Plat....

I am in the same position, and have decided to hold short of DM and roll over about 46K MQMs to next year. To me DM is just not that much better, but of course YMMV.....

I'm in the same situation. I am ATL based and have found Platinum "good enough." With my current year end travel plans, I will have approximately 120,000 MQMs. By rolling over, I am almost guaranteed GM and with only 30K MQMs will re-up for PM. I'll use miles to buy my SkyClub membership.

If it turns out that there are so many DMs in '11 that upgrades become impossible, I'll reconsider at that time.

Same here... and the few cities which I would have loved to been upgraded on this year (SFO and LAX in particular) were so Diamond heavy that I didn't get upgrades, so I'm not going to bother. My SO is a Platinum and he did quite well in the upgrades this year. I think that other than LAX and SFO, he missed one or two TPA - ATL upgrades and that was it.

I would stay PM and do rollover and get a AMEX RESERVE card. Then top of PM list and enjoy the lounge as well and get more MQM with card!

similar situation i am sitting at 122k. If the DL reserve didn't have the requirement you had to book the ticket to the get to the top of the list i would get one. I heard and ask about that requirement and decided not to get one. Around 95 percent of my travel is done on my corp Mastercard.

So as many people get diamond, i am a plat out of MSP and unless i am connecting through ATL or on a tough West Coast flight i get the upgrade. I did not get upgraded on more flights this yr but oh well. I do not value that has high as some people. I would rather have direct flights!

I intended to stay Plat with hefty carryover but an unplanned trip made me Diamond anyway. The accruals are much higher for Diamond even if you don't need the upgrades. You also get the world's ugliest card to prove your new status.

Exactly.

Not sure what you are saying here.

You don't have to use the Reserve card to buy the tickets. I book my tickets on Travelocity with Travelocity Amex and I have confirmed that I am at the top of the upgrade list for the same class.

Or are you saying you don't like it because it does move you up?

Shouldn't matter as long as they have your SM# associated with the reservation. "Reserve" status is linked to that, so it should have nothing to do with buying the tickets with your AMEX or not.

I just hit Diamond and gladly took it, but still will get to roll about 20k over. Won't have any trouble hitting Diamond again this coming year though.

Sent from 4C on 1580 from SFO to ATL--37,000 feet above somewhere or other.:)

Pretty sure the Reserve AMEX gets you to the top of the list within your fare bucket, not within your SM status level.

A DM without a Reserve card on a L fare beats a PM with a Reserve card on a M fare.