Exactly. Delta hasn't announced anything. Very presumptuous title.

They really need to announce something soon, even if it�s some BS that the customers and focus groups told them that these changes were exactly what they wanted, but they just needed to explain the program better. 😳

People are making decisions based upon these announced changes already. How many Amex cards cancelled, Amex spend down (because why bother), flights cancelled and rescheduled on other carriers, flights for next year booked elsewhere. Since we know where they want to go and the shock is over from �ripping off the bandaid�, I�m guessing they�ll just soften up the requirements for status and give more Skyclub visits so they don�t have to completely rework and re-explain their plan.

Well you may be in luck as if the buyout of NK goes through then B6 will have a hub in LAS next year.

I'm looking at switching to AA, but my understanding is they are only waiving their fee for a challenge not the need to do a challenge itself. The 4th Quarter is traditionally my slowest travel period so I wouldn't meet the LPs needed to make it worth it.

That said, I'll probably jump Q1 next year and upgrade my AA Gold to the Exec card. With AA doing 1:1 dollars to Loyalty Points vs. DL at 20:1 and the AA Exec giving unlimited lounge visits + a better alliance (for my travel) it's worth changing for me even being in Atlanta!

Yes, and people are smart to be making decisions based on the changes that have been announced.

Nothing else is coming.

NK does some flights out of DTW as well, hoping the buyout goes through. Thinking of doing the mosaic match for that reason. I love B6 they just don't have many DTW flights.

If you are familiar with the bureaucracy of any big corporation, you know that any announcements of changes and wishful thinking do not matter at all, even coming from CEO.
Any vision has to follow through all the interfacing meetings and even more meetings about meetings fighting for priorities without actually doing anything to solve the problem.
Only then the teams can peak up any tasks that have substance.
The real deadline is December 31, when the status counting resets for the next year. I do not expect Delta to announce anything concrete until beginning of December. Yes, it is bad for planning our travel, but it is simply unrealistic even for an innovative hi-tech corporation, let alone an old school giant like Delta or Bank of America.
Things move as slow there as in any state department.

Therefore, travelers may want to plan their trips without Delta next year.

The "change" may not be coming at all.

One would have thought, however, that they would have planned for this contingency. This is a problem of their own making. They must have run different scenarios. Or maybe they�re just that incompetent that they didn�t. I�m guessing that Amex must be noticing some carnage.

I'd have to think renewal/cancellation/downgrade rates of existing AMEX cards must look absolutely horrible compared to historic trends, I will be downgrading my Business Reserve card as soon as I earn my MQM boost then cancelling it at the next renewal (I'd straight up cancel it, but at least I get a prorated refund of the annual fee I paid in August this way).

I may be in a small minority who has decided not to hold my breath - already booked two intl. J trips with AA/BA for 2024 as part to my status match.

Could I have waited till end of December? Probably. But I don�t have high hopes from DL/Amex.

I am sure there are many FTers who are in this camp�.

I think they will make an announcement once and if they see a significant halting or reduction of elite medallion new bookings and/or especially co-branded card spend impacting their revenue and profit forecasting.

I'm sure there will be a fairly major change coming, now that they've woken up to how bad it is. But I've just lost my confidence in leadership at Delta from the top down here: the fact that they didn't realize this would be a debacle is an indictment of their entire leadership team. Because of this I've also drawn my attention to so many other areas where Delta is getting worse, like reports of customer service reps getting next to no training (correlated with many reports of clueless CSR experiences), large increase in operational snafus, ongoing problems with their IT, etc. It's clear who has the upper hand there: they've lost the thread of what made Delta what it was: an airline that traded on a higher quality experience in exchange for loyalty and somewhat higher average prices.

But they've been dismantling this, drip by drip, for years, and this SkyMiles snafu is just the latest evidence the entire mentality of the executive team has been this way for quite a while. It just took Ed until now to attempt to completely dismantle the last vestiges of what used to make Delta a better choice.

Whether they really make changes or not, this debacle reveals their way of thinking. They have been aiming to make Delta more and more like United and American.

Meanwhile, new CEO at American has stepped in; Isom's a longtime AA exec, but he has an engineering background, not an MBA like Parker was. And we have seen some major shifts in direction at AA: announcements of major renovations to lounges, all new upscale lounges, upgrades to food at all lounges, improvements in operations that he talks about constantly, better on time performance, and so on. It's still not as good as Delta but it's clear that Isom decided to make American more like Delta used to be, whereas Delta is rushing to become more like American used to be.

Hence: I'm giving AA a try. So far: it definitely feels like a step down, but I will ride this out for at least a year, and see what Delta does not just with this "rollback" but across the airline. Do they wake up and rediscover what made them tops in the first place, or are they just going to paper over a multi-year downward trajectory? Only after this year with AA will I evaluate Delta again.

flyertalkers: "delta obviously didn't put enough thought into these changes!"

also flyertalkers: "why aren't they just knee-jerking the rollback!???!"

I agree it's a good sign they are taking a while. But I think if we all rush back to Delta if they make some "good" changes they'll just go back to thinking "whew, we dodged that bullet, we'll just go back to the plan to make Delta worse and worse, but this time we'll do it more gradually."

Unless they see some ongoing pain here I don't have much confidence Delta is going to really change direction. I actually do hope they wake up and realize what their value prop was in the first place: but I kind of doubt it will happen, because if they didn't realize what a debacle this was going to be they clearly don't have the right decisionmakers in place, and that starts at the top.

Let's see if they get their operations decline under control, too, and see if customer service stops getting continually worse. I am enjoying exploring AA this year but I'd be happy if Delta manages to pull out of this tailspin.