cestmoi123

FCM may be reducing the size of the pie, but fewer DMs will mean less competition for the pie that exists.

cestmoi123

Rollover MQD would reward people who were high spenders in the past, particularly the distant past. I can understand why DL wouldn't see a scenario where someone with a very large number of banked MQMs and RDMs could be DM for several years (getting the benefits when redeeming the RDMs) without generating any revenue beyond whatever share of the cc fees DL gets from $15k in annual Amex spending.

jamesteroh

But there could be even less of that pie with fewer diamonds. If people like me drop from DM to PM we could end up just buying FCM tickets we wouldn't have bought otherwise taking more upgrade seats away. Even if I do decide to do the $250K AM EX spend to keep diamond I may buy more FC seats since that's that is going to mean a lot more RDM's from the AM EX spend to burn and may as well do PWM to upgrade to F or do the 12,500 RDMs to upgrade each way on expensive trips.

jamesteroh

I've never understood why the waiver is the same for all four levels. I think it should be $25K for Silver, $50K for Gold, $75 to $100K for PM and $125K to $150k for DM

cestmoi123

People might do all these things, but unclear how that negatively affects people who are staying diamond. Imagine if pax A and B are both DM, and pax A stays DM while pax B drops to PM.

Two scenarios in this case:
1. If pax B then decides to buy F rather than risk the upgrade as a PM, that's only a negative for pax A if we assume that pax A would have (based on some tiebreaker) been ahead of pax B in the upgrade queue had both remained diamonds. So, only a negative in some situations.
2. Pax B doesn't decide to buy F, in which case it's definitely a plus for pax A.

If pax B decides to spend the $250k to keep diamond, and use the RDMs to PWM, that's a negative for pax A, but pax B could have just as easily (had there been no change) decided to take the cost of that $250k spend and put it toward buying F tickets.

SuperG1955

Which is why I will be fine as a PM buying GAP fares. The herd will be thinner through UG starvation.

bergamini

I have lived the life of GAP fares this year as a PM and it's been quite fine, sans no GUC of course. I made the business case with my boss that some days we finish early an some days we go over and so let's stop paying $200 change fees and pay $100-200 more for the ticket and we all get what we want. I was able to even standby for a flight the day before and get on but YMMV as that's not guaranteed. But yeah GAP is fine if they keep the price consistent. I drove to MKE to get them (live in MSN) and some weeks the MKE GAP were $400 or more less than MSN Y buckets on sale at that time.

JB1000

I really like this change but wish they would put more emphasis on money spent rather than miles flown overall. For example, I just hit Diamond for 2018. My YTD stats are as follows:

Total MQMs - 132,925
Less: Amex MQMs - 20,000
Less: Rollover MQMs - 43,028
Equals: "Flown" MQMs - 69,897
MQSs: 80
MQMs / MQS - 874 (skewed a bit bc I had a 9,500 MQM international trip. Earned almost 9.0 MQMs per MQD on that trip)

MQDs: $19,921
MQMs / MQD - 3.51x

So, I am earning a paltry 3.5 MQMs per $ I spend on Delta, which is pathetic. Most of my trips are within the eastern half of the US so few trips are over 1,500 MQMs but the prices I have been paying for tickets is extremely high.

I'd like to see Delta base qualification moreso on spending and assign a MQM multiple to the dollar, even tier it based on fare class, and not worry about the miles we spend in the air as the driving factor. I live in Atlanta so qualifying on segments is extremely difficult.

MSPeconomist

This isn't extremely high. You're very roughly in the range of paying thirty cents per "flown" MQM, which isn't bad from a hub.

JB1000

It’s certainly high compared to a lot of the spend I see on this site. I’ll end the year close to $30,000 in MQD (doubling the requirement) but without my large rollover balance would have unlikely made DM.

All I am saying is that as a publicly traded company, Delta should place higher priority on the customers who spend the most with them over those who happen to fly the most miles. Sometimes they can be the same but as I’ve seen around here that’s often not the case.

GatorBlues

"Spending the most" does not necessarily mean you are the most profitable.
Taking 15 coach flights on last minute short hops for $1,200 each is more profitable than taking 45 long coach flights booked in advance for $400 each.
I don't mean to suggest that your flying isn't profitable. It likely is. Rather, my points is that MQDs often do not reflect profitability.

Delta's goal with its FF and medallions programs is to drive profit. There was a time, before industry consolidation, when FF programs helped fill seats that would have gone out empty. Thus, they added incremental profit to virtually every flight by convincing members to fly one airline over another. There aren't many empty seats these days, so the airlines are going to keep pulling back on these programs unless new carriers emerge and flood the market with empty seats for sale.

bergamini

Of course there are exceptions and I’m sure you can quote dozens. But at the end of the day $30K > $14.5K and Delta is choosing to benefit those.

hnewman

Right now when I am working this waiver means nothing to me as I always make it on MQDs, but I was seriously hoping to be able to use this after retirement for a few years as I have now 500K rollover MQMs. This ended my dream of GUC travel. Let's just say I am not very happy, as with 4MM+ miles I get PM.

GatorBlues

$30K versus $14.5K is not the relevant comparison because $30K is double the threshold for Diamond. Of course spending double the threshold is more profitable except in extremely rare circumstances. The more common comparison is that Delta is benefiting $15K over $14.5K, with no attempt to account for whether the $14.5K is more profitable flying than the $15K.

cestmoi123

You do have to draw a line somewhere, and it needs to be relatively straightforward.

If they could, feasibly, Delta would probably set up a system where status is based on number of points earned, where the points you earn for a flight are based on both how much your ticket was and how much it was compared to other tickets on the flight.