wxman22

Having been Silver for a long time, in 2017, I started flying to Vietnam, thus I had 94,000 MQM, but only $8750 MQD.
I was resigned to being only Gold, but as an Elite +, getting Sky Priority is big deal, so i was happy.
But then I thought Platinum would be nice, but had not way to earn MQD.
So I decided I may as well get the waiver for living overseas, as I have an apartment in Vietnam.

Having a one year lease on apartment is easy, getting any piece of paper with my name on it is another story.
My monthly maintenance bill has the apartment number only.
But I figured I should apply for waiver and asked Building manager to put my name on Monthly bill.
They did for $10.
That was easy.
It took 3 days to figure out Delta.com did not like my McAfee firewall, as I could not upload any documents.
Once I got that sorted out, Delta approved my waiver the next day.

With minimal flying, I'll still have 50k new MQM in 2018, so with roll over, will have >75k MQM

NOLAnwGOLD

Made it to Diamond with 38k miles to rollover! Had quite a few from the year before....we shall see how well I can hit $15k spend without Delta AMEX waiver. Dropped that awful AMEX!! Buh-Bye!

randidliyo

I had the spending for DM but missed by having just 101 segments and not enough miles. I think I should still be Diamond because the spending should be what DL really cares about, right? 101 segments and 20K spending? That should be DM in my book.

pvn

I definitely would prefer a system of pure spend, since I tend to buy extremely close in and the vast majority of my flights are very short. But that's not the system we have. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

FWIW I made DM last year and rolled over 216 miles, and to do that I had to buy an F on my last trip of the year.

Spent_All_My_Miles

I stopped 2-3K MQM short of DM, since I valued the nearly 50K rollover more than the incremental benefits.

The increase in the DM MQD waiver, though, has gotten me worried that it might spread to, say, PM, in which case I might lose my existing rollover (if I am flying under 75K BIS in a year, relying on rollover to get me to 75K, the tickets would cost under 9K)
So this year, I am doing something that I previously considered sacriligious - redeeming miles on domestic flights, when I can get close to 2 cpm, so I will try to finish 2018 as a PM with relatively little rollover.

RFDMinnesota

LAStotheWorld

I made DM for the first and last time ever with 8k rolled over. Even with business spend I wouldn't come close to 250k.

randidliyo

By the way, I contacted DL and asked them for DM status based on my spending and the 101 segments I did fly. I was off work for six months due to illness (Feb-Jul) but I was still able to exceed the DM spending limit and still fly 101 segments, so definitely I was flying and still fly on the pace of a DM. I've been DM since it was started and I wonder if they will make an exception due to the fact that I was on medical leave for six months last year. Any experiences out there with this type of situation?

R

CMK10

I ended up far closer to making Gold than I thought I would with $4,500 MQDs (and way over on MQM thanks to previous rollvers). Thankfully DL gave me a challenge for GM this year and I'm enjoying it far more than I enjoyed being a FO.

pharmawalk

Year before last, i was GM and rolled over 22700 MQMs which positioned me early last year to hit PM (which i did). This year I rolled over 10K MQMs, which will make it possible to hit PM again for me.

pharmawalk

GM is night and day compared to FO, just as PM is with GM IMHO.