Long time medallion member (pre WP) and have been at least Gold every year. For 2015, once my last planned trip is completed, I will be $174 short for Gold. I'm good for miles and segments.

Anyone have recommendations? Given that it is such a small amount, does it make sense to buy MQDs? Home is OKC.

Thanks in advance.

AFAIK DL doesn't sell MQDs and there's no apparent way, "legal" or not, to purchase them from someone else. When DL sold MQMs (at very high personalized prices) last year, you did get MQDs for the purchase and the MQMs did rollover. Eat in a really good restaurant somewhere.

When not take a fun little cheap weekend trip somewhere? Depending on where you're located, a day of Christmas shopping in NYC, Boston, Chicago, or San Francisco could be nice. Fly to Baltimore and visit the aquarium. Go south for an afternoon of warm weather or even a day on the beach.

Interesting concept.

How much would, say, $100 in MQDs cost? Would it be . . . .

1) More than $100, because of the convenience of not having to fly . . . or . . .

2) Would it be less than $100, since they're not actually having to provide you with a seat, that someone else could actually purchase?

If you have another trip already ticketed for the year, call DL and ask if they can either increase the fare class, or buy up to a GAP fare. With no itenerary change you've got a 99% chance of a change fee waiver and then you get your MQD's with no extra travel.

Great idea, but the upcoming trip is business related and my employer would frown on the additional cost.

Pay for it out of your pocket if you can. You're on the same flights, so what would they care. Nothing stopping you from putting it on your personal card.

Still going to be cheaper (most likely) than booking a quick trip that you don't really want to go on.

Why not take a quick weekend trip and make a mini-vacay out of it? There are some pretty good coach fares out there.

If you get creative, for same/lower cost of a roundtrip, you might be able to create some multi-city itinerary, that gives you tons of MQMs (useful for the rollover for next year).

I had planned to do a quick late Dec trip to get my MQDs over the Gold threshold, but an upcoming business trip ended up being a little more expensive than I thought. But (since I first did an incorrect currency conversion...) I was still $74 short....I bought up to C+ (this is a trip to China, where Business was $10,000, so that wasn't going to happen....)

I agree that if it's domestic I'd look for FCM, but for international, this worked for me. At least- I really hope my calculations are correct! I'll know after next week (well, I'll know the MQDs for this trip, which was purchased by Chinese colleagues - the next China trip in December I bought, so I know the MQDs already)

At the end of last year, when DL sold MQMs the MQDs for the purchase counter for 2014. So effectively they were making targeted offers of the following sort:

X MQDs for $X with 3,000 MQMs included as a bonus

Y MQDs for $Y with 5,000 MQMs included as a bonus

Z MQDs for $Z with 10,000 MQMs included as a bonus

This says that 1 MQD costs less than one dollar but the exact price would depend on how one values the MQMs, even if just for rollover.

However, this presumes that people who need only MQDs for status will be given such personalized offers.

Quick question...actually a couple..haha:

1. Do you get MQDs for C+ purchases?
2. As a GM, couldn't you have selected them free of charge T-72 (OR am I mis-reading and it's only for domestic flights?!) ?

With the C+ cost (not sure how much they are, assuming it's $199), you could've probably taken a domestic trip = MORE MQMs = MORE ROLLOVERs...

Safe travels!!

To take a domestic trip requires more time.

Yes, this was a change in the past year and it's listed somewhere on the Delta website - it's been posted & discussed here as well

I'm silver now so free at 24hrs - which is why I bought it now (actually not even available at all on one of the flights, which sucks, but at least an aisle came up available a few days after booking)

I paid $169 for C+ DTW-PVG. I really didn't have time to make another trip - I would have if needed but it wouldn't have been enjoyable (and yes, I did think about this earlier in the year, but our planned anniversary trip got pushed back to January which messed up my earlier medallion plans)

I rolled over 25,000 MQM last year and will probably do the same again, so I didn't really need any more. Since I don't spend $25K on Amex, I have to meet the MQD to maintain status at all. Gold is a stretch for me - depending on the confluence of business trips, it happens every few years - when it's close and I have a lot of international travel planned in the upcoming year (as I do for 2016) I will push, but normally just stick with silver. I don't travel often for work - but when I do it tends to be lots of miles for not very much money.....