drchrysler

It appears Delta will be updating their partner mileage accrual rates effective January 1, 2018 based on the new charts that appeared on DL.com this week.

https://www.delta.com/content/www/en.../airlines.html

As always in the Delta world, there are both positive and negative changes with the updated charts. I listed some of these changes below after briefly reviewing the updated charts for some of the partners

Positive changes include:

- KL TATL flights will earn MQDs based on percentage of distance flown vs ticket price
- Group 3 partners have increased MQMs on lower business fare classes and premium economy (i.e. MF I,C,D increased from 75% to 100% MQM)
- All AM Business fares earn 200% MQMs and redeemable miles along with 40% MQDs
- Many deep discounted fares now earn miles (i.e. VA G Fares have been added)

Negative Changes:

- Reduced RDM and MQD earning rates on many group 2 and 3 partner fare classes
- Redeemable mile class bonuses reduced or eliminated on Group 3 partners
- Reduced MQM accrual rates on some lower economy fares

Unfortunately, the KE accrual charts appear to be unchanged

xliioper

Haven't heard about Korean authorities approving the new DL/KE agreement. Also, B6 and HA are challenging the existing US DOT approved ATI for DL/KE from 2002 --

http://aviationweek.com/awincommerci...r-relationship

Andrew Ying

Actually. KE chart is simply not updated, meaning something good might happen.

mot29

I’ll take a look at what this means for me going forward. For the last few years, I’ve used partner MQDs based on mileage % twice a year or more to get to the $15,000 MQD spend.

C W

Lots of cuts to the earnings of the cheapest fare classes, often from 50% to 25% RDM including on VS.

Also, does it seem as though KL is going back to fully distance based?

https://www.delta.com/content/www/en...-airlines.html

xliioper

Deep discount RDM on AF/KL/AZ are already at 25%.

callaweii

glad to see that CI premium economy will earn 100% MQM.

The Situation

Biggest surprise to me, unless I missed something in my quick read through the fine print for KL, AF and AM is that ticketing carrier does not matter anymore for MQD earning! MQD arbitrage will become much easier.

taxicabnumber

I saw that too, but on the main SkyMiles partner page it does still say that 006 tickets will earn based on fare. So I wonder if it's just an accidental omission on the new partner pages?

Would be awesome if what you say is actually true though...

xliioper

I wouldn't be 100% confident in that. They still have the following disclaimer at the top of the page --

"With SkyMiles, partner-marketed flights that are ticketed by Delta will earn miles toward Award Travel based on ticket price, instead of distance flown. So when you pay a higher price, you will be rewarded with more miles — up to 75,000 per ticket.
Partner-marketed flights that are not ticketed by Delta will continue to earn miles based on a percentage of distance flown* as determined by the fare class paid."

Could be they just decided not to re-iterate these conditions on every partner page.

ithacxa

I'm generally happy about this change. Delta could have nerfed the MQD percentage earning rates of their partner airlines, but that did not pretty much happen.

C W

Are our standards now so low that devaluations actually elicit a response of “generally happy” just as long as it’s not too big of devaluation?

RealHJ

Yes. Just as Dullta intended.

xliioper

Discount J MQD earning on a number of the Tier 1 partners is actually getting bumped up from 25%-35% range to 40%. Also some bump up's in PE MQD's. But I guess I'm not allowed to mention positive changes.

NOLAnwGOLD

So how does one avoid getting ticketed by DL (006)? DO you just book on KLM/AF/VS/VA.com and make sure it's not DL flight numbers?? In these cases, it's hard if not impossible to use GUCs though, right?