I see your point and I agree with it somewhat, but I think these changes are focused on one thing: Trust in the program.

Trust is basically goodwill. Goodwill is a huge asset for a corporation like Delta. If Delta can regain some of the trust they lost from long-term flyers, that means a lot. It's valuable. And it incentivizes the 30 year-olds to stick with a program for the long term. They can believe that their many years of loyalty will be rewarded.

In this action, DL is preventing a lawsuit over aggressive MQM promotion in the past (evidenced by the hawking of AMEX cards in the gate areas for years) and the need to rapidly dispose of MQM's for DL's own benefit. It was a cancer that they caused.

The people with the most MQM's are likely...
1. Long time frequent fliers... give them a bump up in their MM status. That will pacify them. Costs DL next to nothing.
2. High MQM rollover CC mega-users... give them "status" for longer and prevent those miles from becoming RDM's. Pacify those people and even save $$ in the long-run since RDM's cost more than "status", since it keeps the customer paying cash for more routes in the future because they feel "special" for longer.

Loosening/delaying the SC visit restrictions on the DL AMEX cards had to be done to stop the hemorrhage of AMEX spend that they had to be seeing over the past month. That hemorrhage was going to destroy Q4 results and they needed to do something now to stop that pending disaster for next earnings quarter.

What is apparent here is that under no circumstances will they budge on qualifying for status in the future. It's MQD's... period.

Everything they did in this rollback is to keep the ranks of elites swollen, which devalues elite status longer, but has the least impact on cash flow for DL. But it pacifies the elites enough to prevent revolt, lawsuits and free agency. They must be grinning ear to ear reading this board today. Everyone is so gosh darn happy. They let us eat cake, and we scarfed it down with plenty of frosting on our faces.

It appears DL knows their customer very well after all and carved the easiest way out. Just remember, that elite status for longer that you are so happy about just got massively devalued.

Which came with a calculated risk, especially in 2020, about how long the pandemic was going to last and how soon regular air travel was goign to resume for many. (Or just how long the airlines would be propped up if the pandemic had been worse than it has been to this point.) AmEx was throwing a huge number of �don�t cancel this travel� card incentives across their whole portfolio in 2020-21.

I gambled that air travel would normalize sooner than later and took advantage of the MQM boosts offered at a time when there was a lot of chatter about how the travel uncertainty made it more practical to throw spend over to a card that earned cash back or other non0travel rewards.

I won the gamble and got a couple years of PM out of it that I�d newer get under normal circumstances. It�s made air travel a little more fun but I was going to run out of surplus MQMs eventually.

Perhaps the partial rollback was Delta’s intention all along? Makes the changes seem MUCH less significant.

(I rarely fly Delta, what’s a “FO”? Thank you.)

Fair.

And in practice, if you (and other FOs) didn�t use your FO status to choose those preferred seats, they probably would have gone to BE pax who get last minute seat assignments at the gate.

But that is a benefit that essentially costs Delta nothing to provide. And if it rewards customers like you playing the loyalty game more than customers being cheap and buying BE, even better.

FO = Silver Medallion

Acronym FO is based on �flies often� or �flying orchid�. Someone else (or a google search of �delta flying orchid�) can probably provide a better history on how the terms came into being.

Deleted

No. "Lifetime" means the lifetime of DL management's intent. The program could go on, but the "annual complimentary" benefits that some are interpreting as lifetime could go away in a year.

Some of us earned a MM "lifetime" status level before DL went to annual complimentary. DL used to say that such "lifetime" status would continue to be honored as lifetime. I wonder what they would say now?

I don't believe it has been devalued from where it currently stands, sure it's devalued from where it was going to go in terms of competition among elites for upgrades, but Delta was going to see the error in its way soon enough through lost customers, the program they announced was so uncompetitive for flyers who had a choice they were going to hemorrhage non-hub frequent flyers. I believe even the lowered requirements are steep enough that it will cut down on new qualifications at each level.

Honestly, it's well past time for that term to be deprecated, it's sort of nonsensical.

Regards

FO is Flying Orchid of course ... an obsolete status that was replaced by Silver Medallion but in the past 'FO' was still the label in some systems for Silver Medallions.

Except if you are rewarding loyalty, that is rewarding past behavior to hope it will continue. You know what people have done in their past, but that 30 year old could do anything in the future, including no more travel. And the old travel warriors aren�t doing it so much anymore, so giving them the illusion of status (with rare upgrades anymore) costs very little. You can�t lower the MM limits without grandfathering everyone in the program, and without MQM boosts, it will be much harder to achieve.

From: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/18023720-post218.html

"While there was a Flying Orchid program at one time (along with a Flying Colonel program), the abbreviation "FO" as used today has nothing whatsoever to do with that program. Both of those programs were established before the idea of a Frequent Flyer program ever came into existence. The Flying Colonel program was to recognize the decision makers in business (e.g., corporate executives) with influence over travel decisions, whether they themselves flew much or not. The Flying Orchid program was to recognize, essentially, the secretaries (and later, the travel arrangers) for said executives, whether they flew much or not. Travel agents would typically nominate a customer for either Flying Colonel or Flying Orchid, submitting the nomination through the local Delta sales rep (back when the airline actually relied on travel agents for business).

In the beginning days of frequent flyer programs, there was no such thing as an elite level. However, at some point, the thought of offering special recognition and some extra benefits to the most frequent of flyers was cooked up by someone. At Delta, the intent was indeed to recognize those customers who flew most often. So, the Medallion level was created to honor those who flew often and the designation "FO" was indeed created to identify a customer who "flys often" and had reached Medallion level. There was only one Medallion level; you either flew often or you didn't. If you did, the label applied was "FO" on the manifest. Of note, the Flying Colonel and Flying Orchid programs were still in existence when the initial Medallion elite level was created. It would have made absolutely no sense at all to take a term representing Flying Orchids (who often flew only once or twice a year, since they were secretaries primarily, not travelers) and confer it on actual customers who flew a lot.

In subsequent years, the "Royal Medallion" level was created for those who flew a great deal. As I recall, the threshold for Medallion was 30,000 miles a year and for Royal Medallion it was 60,000 miles a year. I'll never forget during the early 90's economic downturn being told by a Delta city ticket office agent that, "I don't know what we would do without all you Royal Medallions." I think the designator for Royal Medallions was "RM" on the manifest.

Somewhere in the mid-90's, the three tier elite level system came out. The lowest elite level was named Silver Medallion and it adopted the old "Medallion" designator, FO. Gold Medallions were designated GM and Platinums were designated PM.

But the bottom line is that the original Medallion level was awarded to someone who "flys often" and the designator for that was most assuredly "FO", which was totally unrelated to the ongoing Flying Orchid program, which continued in existence for several years thereafter."
Elsewhere in that thread is the statement that FO was retained because using SM to indicate Silver Medallion would have been confusing, since SM could be interpreted as meaning SkyMiles.

I think they�ve pretty successfully delayed massive free agency for 1-2 years. As a non-million-miler, I understand why they bolstered that segment. I think all of us know pretty well where these programs are headed long term. All the very best.

Lifetime status now means you have a lifetime of annually-renewed status, with the with the current published benefits available to that elite level at the time of renewal. DL or UA or whoever 1) doesn't want a bunch of elites earning their lifetime status claiming different benefits available at the time of passing the threshold. It would be an administrative nightmare as 2) Delta wants flexibility to change benefits easily (of course "after listening to their customers" ).