March 2015 SkyMiles Update
 

Today we will be communicating a number of updates to the SkyMiles program about improved mileage redemption and the ability to earn more MQDs. Delta.com will be updated later today with these changes and, of course, please refer to delta.com and the SkyMiles Membership Guide and Program Rules for detailed information.

Increased award availability
When we announced the SkyMiles 2015 program we committed to making more award seats available at the lowest prices and since the start of 2015 we have expanded award availability at the lowest prices by greater than 50%. We are seeing a double digit increase in award redemptions since January and other customer-positive award redemption trends in terms of the average number of miles redeemed, partner awards, and one-way award usage.

New (lower) One Way Award
In 2015 we will be offering One Way Award tickets beginning as low as 10,000 miles (plus taxes and fees) in select markets in the contiguous 48 United States and between the 48 contiguous United States and select Mexico/Caribbean destinations. Travel will be valid through December 31, 2015 with a 21 day advance purchase.

Award shopping calendar additions
We are pleased to confirm that we have added four new airline partners to our award shopping engine over the past few weeks following a quiet soft launch. You can now book awards online with China Airlines, China Southern, China Eastern and Gol. We will be adding more partners in the coming weeks and even more by summer of 2015.

Mobile award shopping
In January, we added the ability to book Awards from your smartphone. You can shop for our new One Way Awards, our new partners and other Award Tickets using the Fly Delta mobile app. We are seeing great usage of this new and easy to use feature right out of the gate.

Earn MQDs on most partner-ticketed flights, exception fares
New for 2015 when you travel on flights ticketed by most of our airline partners you will now earn MQDs, which will help you qualify for Medallion status faster. This change will be retroactive to January 1, 2015 to include your travel from this Medallion year. Flights marketed and ticketed by partners may earn MQDs based on a percentage of distance flown as determined by the fare class paid. You can visit www.delta.com/partnerairlines for details by carrier. It’s going to take us a little bit of time to process retroactive credit for past flight activity, but they should post to your accounts between now and March 20. You can also earn MQDs on most exception fares, such as bulk, consolidator and group tickets. Learn more by visiting www.delta.com/exceptionfares. In addition to the MQD changes we’ve also made minor changes to the way you earn Medallion status on Alaska Airlines flights, effective April 1.

Diamond Medallions now board first
Many of you have caught on to this already, but as part of our branded products experience that launched on March 1, we are pleased to confirm that Diamond Medallion members are now invited to board the aircraft with customers in Delta One or First Class as part of our Premium boarding zone.

Thank you

Get the popcorn, here we go!

There is no low award availability less than 30 days in advance for many destinations. Is this a new a part of the "new skymiles"? Why wasn't this announced in advance (or at all) so customers could plan ahead?

Thanks for the update :)

MQDs on partner issued tickets and bulk tickets? That is big, and puts UA on notice :-)

What's confusing though on the DL exception fares webpage it still says exception fares do not earn MQDs???

There is some good here. ^

Note, however, that http://www.delta.com/partnerairlines still says that MQDs are only awarded on DL-ticketed flights.

Left hand, meet right hand.

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 8_1_3 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/600.1.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/8.0 Mobile/12B466 Safari/600.1.4)

Great update to the MQD rules!

Thanks for something positive.

Great news!^

OTOH, KE is still Group 4 partner.:(

The OP did say that the website would be updated later today to reflect the changes... give them the day at least to update the MQD partner earnings info.

Thanks for the update. Some nice changes - looking forward to MQD accrual on partner ticketed flights.

Also looking forward to the 10,000 one-ways. Those will be a nice addition.

I may have missed it, but I didn't see any update to the AS earnings - specifically the MQM/MQD sections (if that is what is changing). Can you provide more details on the changes to earning Medallion status when flying AS?

I'm a Plat, but I think the change to allow Diamonds to board with First is a good one - - they are generally closer to a missed upgrade, so it's only fair to ease the pain more, and provide more of a differentiation between status levels. It's not that big a deal to then board with Sky, as a Plat.

Looking for the positive, with Gol redemptions now online award tickets to Iguassu/Iguazu Falls just got a lot easier to find. IGU, non-stop from GRU and GIG.

I'm intrigued to see the same. My current Phnom Penh trip would have been so much easier on Korean, although one night in Bangkok is never a bad thing.