Earn Medallion Qualification Dollars towards Status for the next Medallion year; 2024 Medallion MQD Boost selections will be applied toward Medallion qualification for the 2025 Medallion Year and will be deposited into your account in January 2024.

Is it old news?

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

Someone here can correct me if I'm wrong, but pretty sure that benefit got added when they raised the spend threshold for GM/PM/DM for this year.

Yes, this is old news. MQD Boosts are just one of the new Plat/Diamond Choice Benefits that were added as 2024 Choice Benefit selections and were announced in October 2022. 2024 Choice Benefit selections are based on status earned during the 2023 calendar year. They can chosen as soon as you earn 2024 status during 2023 calendar year up until Jan 31, 2025. The MQD Boost Choice option would presumably be retroactively backdated to 2024 earnings year if chosen in Jan 2025. I suppose this is one of several indications that they may not shake things up too dramaticallty for the 2024 status earnings year and major changes may not be implemented until 2025 status earnings year.

My strategy will change dramatically based on the criteria Delta sets. If it’s an MQD only system, I’ll be happy to finally not feel the pressure for booking distance centric trips, as being a midwest (MSP) captive has always made MQM earning a challenge. The occasional (and expensive) 250-500 mile hops from MSP have always seemed like a waste since the MQM earnings just weren’t there. It is a constant opportunity cost game…

Not sure if this has been posted here. But this article had a good take on what might happen.

https://thriftytraveler.com/news/air...ogram-changes/

Pretty much rehashes what has already been said a million times and it is still all speculation

I don't think I posted this before...

Putting my thinking cap on, were I in Delta's shoes I'd be looking at overhauling the MQD requirement/waiver. The problem, as some have indicated, is that once you get to $25/30k spent ($25k for the waiver and the first bonus on the DL Plat card, $30k for the first bonus on the DL Reserve card), the next "tier" is so far away that it can be hard to justify continuing to spend on the card. And of course, the Diamond waiver is at $250k.

A related "glitch" is that someone who misses Diamond MQDs by a few bucks and the Diamond waiver by a few bucks also gets a "zonk". We focus on "sweet spots" here, but such "sour spots" also exist and this is a particularly tricky one to navigate.

If I were in DL's shoes, I'd probably ditch the waiver per se. Instead, I'd simply credit MQDs-per-dollars-spent on the cards (probably at about 10% - B6 does this) and possibly adjust the spend thresholds a bit at the same time. If you went with a 10:1 ratio ($10,000 CC spend=$1,000 airline spend), $30k in CC spend would achieve the same effect as a Silver waiver. I might also do something like adjusting the MQM bonuses to be "5000 MQMs every $10,000" instead of "15,000 MQMs every $30,000" since...if you're naturally going to spend $59k that might get a bit more out of you, but if you're "only" going to spend $45k you might start looking at another CC instead.

If a major overhaul were to involve going to an AA-style system (with "just" spend-based status), then I'd be curious as to what would happen to "make up for" the implicit loss of MQM bonuses (and presumably, MQD waiver as part of a domino effect) on the Plat/Reserve cards...losing that alongside the rumored lounge overhaul would make me consider just killing the card (possibly just getting the cheapest one with the 15% discount on redemptions and sock drawer-ing it) and buying a "straight" SC membership since the value proposition of the two most expensive cards is down to three things (the waiver/MQM bonuses, the SkyClub access, and the Companion Coupon) and they'd be messing with two of the three.

One answer might be to give the "fancier" cards a few new bonus categories/improve baseline spend; the other option that leaps to mind would be to bonus spend on those cards vs MQDs (so where the "base" cards would get $1000 in MQDs for every $10,000 in spend, the fancier ones might get $1250 in MQDs).

If I can’t get to a useful status with the SkyMiles Platinum, I might as well move over to the AmEx Gold and then just transfer to Delta/Fling Blue/Virgin Atlantic based on my travel plans. FB and Virgin have way better transatlantic redemption options anyways.

As someone with both the DL Platinum and the AMEX Platinum, if making Silver takes too much effort I'd probably keep the DL card but sockdrawer it until I spend my remaining 300k SkyPesos (for the 15% off awards, PWM, and a free checked bag) but I'd certainly downgrade my AMEX Plat to either Gold or Green. Without flying DL meaningfully, the lack of lounge access tips the scales against keeping it, especially with the recent AF increase.

I just can't wait for Thursday to get here so that all of the soothsaying in this thread will end. (and we will finally move on to the part where all of these "experts" rail on about how whatever the changes are - or aren't - they were the wrong ones, and will simultaneously drive away all of Delta's "most loyal" customers...AND... do nothing toward solving whatever problem they are trying to solve).

Oh, and the obligatory 1,000 posts or so of "I'm Delta's most profitable customer and I am going to take my business elsewhere now! Really! I mean it this time! I know I say that every time something changes, but this time I'm going to follow through!!!! Really!"

Flyertalkers are nothing if not predictable!

I’m actually a pretty decidedly unprofitable customer for Delta this year- lots of bags on time claims, spending down a eCredit from an EU 261 claim last year, and the ‘spend $250, get $75 off’ credit card tithing, a few award flights and I haven’t paid full cash price for a ticket all year. I can understand it if they don’t want to further reward people like me.

I mean, the problem right now is that the other airlines are different forms of "mess" from what I can tell. This is going to sound absurd in some ways, but I can at least say with Delta that I mostly know the score on the screwups and how to plan for and deal with them.

Then again, as it stands right now, Silver isn't really worth the squeeze. Gold, on the other hand, rather is (due to complementary SDC - and you know what, that would be a benefit I'd consider keeping a fancy card for).

See I don't care about SDC at all, because I only want aisle seats and SDC on full flights isn't going to yield that. That's why I was Plat for five years, C+ aisle at ticketing. I don't fly enough for Plat any more, so it's either Silver or nothing.

That's fair. For me, SDC is the main thing - I generally pay for F/J up front, but being able to use a paid F/J ticket flexibly within a travel day is very useful (I've considered it a reasonable tradeoff for the fact that you effectively cannot be "upgraded" from F once you've paid for it; I honestly doubt I'd miss it if DL got rid of non-operational comp-ups).

Edit: But this is just a case of "Everybody has different priorities for what they want from an FFP".

[I "blame" the fact that I was "trained" on Virgin America's Elevate program - where complementary upgrades to First did not happen. It was part of the airline's operating model - they intended for the F product to be worth buying, but also to make the only way in to be to buy up into it.]

Does anyone else expect a devaluation in RDM value?