Delta employees were sent a “highly confidential” email last week around these changes. There was supposed to be a meeting today to get front line management ready for Thursday. I guess this will be something huge. Sit down, strap in and STFU. Here we goooooo. Weeeeeeee.

I was looking at a confirmed F PHX-ATL-JAX for mid December but was showing I'd only earn 1500 MQM, obviously wrong but didn't think much of it other than the earning estimator being wonky as always.

Well I go on vacation for a week and see this bomb of a thread... haha a lot of entertaining reading and speculation.

I think the one thing we can be sure of is that whatever is being changed will not be a good thing for the vast majority of medallions (likely something close to a gutting of the program)... and it is going to be extremely complicated and confusing based on what appears to be significant internal training.

Bottom line is - this will only be good for DL's bottom line.

There will probably be a small minority that the changes are good for on the face of it, if the AA and UA changes are representative, but I would caution those people to avoid gloating/celebrating too much.

Well then, no more vacations for you! Can't have you causing another program change on us! :)

Whatever is coming, it may not be more complicated once we learn the program. With the current programs:
UA: Two options 1) Earn this many PQP or 2) Earn a reduced number of PQP but also fly a certain number of segments
AA: One option: Earn X loyalty points. There are multiple ways to earn those points, but there is only one metric to track: loyalty points
DL: Earn one from A: MQMs or segments
AND
Earn one from B: MQDs or cc waiver

We are used to DL and how it works, but at the basic level (metrics to obtain status) it is currently the most complicated.

Of course, any significant program change comes with a learning curve and this one (if it is as significant as speculated) would be no different. But someone here will be figuring out how to order bonsai trees with days.

Road warriors who do the shorter, expensive domestic hops on a regular basis (like CAE-ATL-GNV-ATL-CAE one week and CAE-ATL-BNA-ATL-CAE) the next week would almost certainly benefit more from an AA/UA style system. (That's the exact opposite of my travel profile haha).

This MQM estimator bug has been there for many months and has been documented here many times and it's not just for 2024 flights. It's got nothing to do with upcoming program changes.

It's taking the last segment of itin and multiplying by 2 to calculate the MQM no matter what the fare class. 2 x 5,456 = 10,219. The estimator is not used when actually crediting flights and you will get correct MQM credit once flights are flown.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...827f968aca.png


Here is example for PHX-ATL-JAX where it is multiplying ATL-JAX segment by 2.

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...cd539d984a.png
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...56e5bcedac.png

2 x 270 = 540

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...73f9d84088.png

What would be really interesting to know is if AMEX is having a similar staff training ongoing. The way DL and AMEX are intertwined, its very unlikely that DL can truly unilaterally change Skymiles, so major AMEX changes (perhaps those in the reddit speculation thread) are also likely. Only 2 more days until we know, but whatever the changes are, I suspect 9/14/23 will be a day many medallion members (and AMEX holders) will remember for a while.

I guess one thing I'm surprised of in a way is that DL would be doing a major overhaul of the medallion earning system just after significantly jacking up the MQDs for this year... and they don't know what the elite levels are going to be come January yet since we're not even 3 quarters through the year.

Seems like a dirty way for them to wipe out everyone's rollover MQMs though, unless they have some sort of head start rollover conversion.

That does not surprise me at all. I would expect that to be the first step in the changes, but I would expect there will be more ways to get to status. Everyone here seems to be in agreement that the changes that will be made are to benefit Delta. I think there is an incorrect assumption though that the changes will reduce the number of medallions and or reduce the balance of MQMs. You have to ask yourself how does reducing the number of medallions or MQMs benefit Delta? How would it benefit DL to have fewer customers locked into flying DL? If you don't have status, why would you ever stick to one airline, rather than booking the best mix of schedule/services/price based on your preferences? And why would DL want to reduce the number of MQMs? It's not like it's an item on its balance sheet, so it doesn't hurt DL. Medallions may whine and complain about the odds that the PM that flies once per year thanks to cc spend and rollover MQMs might just happen to take their one trip on the same flight that you are on and steal your upgrade, but they actions speak louder than words and they are still flying DL. While the saying that if everyone has status, no one has status is probably true, that is the situation that benefits DL the most.

It’s also possible that the major changes won’t take effect until January 1st, 2025 to give more time notice and let people use their rollover MQMs for one more year. This reminds me of early 2014 time period when DL made the switch from earning miles by distance flown to $ spent. All you heard from early 2014 to the end of the year was “get to know the new 2015 SkyMiles program changes” with a link to conversions, etc. Back in 2014, they announced the 2015 program changes 10 months out. Could see something similar here.

I ran the same flights for this year and it worked it out correctly - could well be buggy but it wasn't consistent from this to year to next.

let’s remember that delta is not a follower. Dl has led on devaluations. Nobody does it better than delta. (I am referring to waiver with the 15/25/35/350)

It seems obvious that DL will move to a single metric in the same way that UA now uses PQPs and AA uses loyalty points. Even DL's close partners AF/KL have changed to a single metric for Flying Blue with XPs. They wouldn't make this big of a deal of the change and training for it just to tinker under the hood.

It will be more interesting to see if they do something closer to what UA did and keep the program mostly about flying and credit card spending or mirror AA with a broader "loyalty is all the ways you earn miles" approach. Someone said up thread that some of the experiments with earning MQDs through partner spend might have been a test for the broader approach, so maybe that's a clue to their thinking.

Also, it will be interesting to see if DL does something with lounge access simultaneously or if that rumor was just random internet crap. Maybe they embrace an approach more like the rest of the world and somehow link lounge access to status rather than just to membership/credit card holding? They've already done a little of this by having different lines and priorities for entrance by status and class of service when the lounges are overcrowded.

So we should prepare to mock TPG ruthlessly? Is that what I'm hearing?

I once confronted someone from over there about parroting corporate doublespeak from an airline (I forget who). Their response was, and I paraphrase, "Yeah...but that's what they sent us". I responded with "...why not just say 'This is BS and we know it?'" And they said "Well, we can't do that.

[By way of crediting, it's a shame that when crediting a de facto PR piece folks won't replace h/t (hat tip) with t/d (turd dump).]

[Double post]