GUWonder

It's a rather simple pair of batch queries and a single calculation adjustment as long as DL's promo says that the promotional status miles will be credited at the end of the promo period. DL's been able to do it before.

Crazy4Birds

If they've been able to do it before in this type scenario, that's certainly to their credit! But, bottom line for those of us who do fly a lot on more than one airline, for someone like me who will already qualify for DM based on existing bookings in 2009, anything that diminishes the value of DM for 2010 will send my 'discretionary' business elsewhere, to AA in this situation. I'm certainly happy for anyone that benefits from whatever decision DL makes, but for me personally, I will keep business travel with DL or switch to AA based upon a variety of factors, and one important factor is how many DM's are competing with me for UPG's on the routes that I fly. Everyone's MMV!!!!

pmaddock

GU -although I most certainly agree that Mr. Robertson's thought process is paramount in this situation in my opinion the implementation is not something to be so easily dismissed. Implementation of a promo like this will have variables albeit ones they should have prior experience for. What's more figurative though is what they have on thier plate already. From the looks of things DL operates a comparatively archaic set of systems and there basically isn't an american company of any size now which adequately staffs its IT department. Injection of another set of variables on top of everything they are doing right now would be an open invitation to chaos. Note that a large portion of nwa.com was down for most of the day yesterday after all. Sometimes it doesn't take much knock a large system off kilter.

Denolloyd

Out of sheer curiosity, if certain individuals travel at the GM rate but obtain DM due to MQM promotions, how often would they actually compete with a "true DM" such as yourself when they travel much less then you?

For example, if as a DM you travel JFK-LAX-JFK weekly, but the "pseudo" DM (really a FO/GM) travels JFK-LAX-JFK monthly, he/she would compete with you about 25% of the time which is far from regular. Hardly enough to be concerned about. YMMV, but that's my take.

There is always EP which cannot be obtained via promotions at this point

GUWonder

How will you know this year or even next how many Diamonds are competing with you for upgrades on the routes that you fly? I think you won't know until long after any such promo is over.

DL management diminished the value of Diamond in the process of creating the Diamond tier. How did DL management accomplish that? Here's how: DL management created the DL Diamond tier to be mostly just a reincarnation of benefits that DL-NW Platinums had before DL management decided to strip away those benefits from a small minority of customers to give those benefits to a smaller fraction of that small minority of customers.

GUWonder

.... especially when DL management has already so heavily taxed the IT resources as part of DL management's customer-unfriendly changes to DL's loyalty programs (e.g., the triple tier award chart pricing implementation).

It's already chaos, with or without an open invitation.

Crazy4Birds

Nothing that DL does will change what I do in 2009---I already have all tix arranged for the rest of the year (and not all on DL, mind you!)---more than enough to qualify for DM.

But when DM is introduced, if I'm still the first person to be UPG'd on all of my AA flights, while 20th on the airport UPG list with DL, then my discretionary purchases for Apr-Dec 2010 will largely go towards AA. You're right that I don't know right now, but I'll have a pretty good idea in April, and plenty of time to move my business around...So, the promo doesn't affect me in 2009, but could shift a lot of my flights to AA for 2010.....

Crazy4Birds

Theoretically, you're spot on!----but for me as an individual, for domestic UPG's, all that matters is if I'm #1 on the list (or, with AA, usually upgraded at 100 hours), versus potentially being #20 on the DL UPG gate list because on any given day there are 19 DM's ahead of me. That's all that matters---everything else is theoretical....it really varies with what flights you're on...

Dovster

That's very true. Look at my case, for example. I am GM right now, will be PM shortly, and by the end of the year I will have less than 50,000 BIS miles.

I will only be PM because of the promos and having flown three TLV-USA segments this year in Biz. Now, let's say that the same thing happened last year and I spent all of 2009 as a PM. For how many flights this year would I have been in the competition for upgrades?

TLV-ATL (not upgradable).
ATL-FLL (in the competition).
FLL-JFK (in the competition).
JFK-TLV (Biz Elite).
TLV-ATL (Biz Elite).
ATL-FLL (paid F).
FLL-ATL (paid F).
ATL-TLV (Biz Elite).
TLV-MXP (Alitalia).
MXP-TLV (Alitalia).
TLV-ATL (not upgradable).
ATL-FLL (in the competition).
FLL-ATL (in the competition).
ATL-BOS (in the competition).
BOS-DCA (in the competition).
DCA-ATL (in the competition).
ATL-TLV (not upgradable).

Over the entire year, I would have been in the competition for a total of 7 segments (all of them short hops of under 2 hours).

In other words, I don't present much of a threat to other Elites and wouldn't even if I were a Double Diamond.

stephem

Not quite, because you are looking at only one flyer. What you guys are not factoring in with this analysis is that a 2x promo could conceivably add many, many additional GMs/PMs to the Diamond ranks. If you added enough of them, the fact that each individual one was flying even only occassionally would still result in you having some # of these "shoulda been GMs/PMs" in the mix everytime you fly.

And I suspect there are a lot of extra Golds and Plats this year from the previous promos. One single business class flight USA to Singapore would have just about gotten you to Plat during the 3x promo...

pbarnette

That is certainly true, but the reality is that the airlines wouldn't be having these offers were it not for the dramatic drop-off in travel, particularly business travel and premium cabin travel. This will probably mitigate any potential elite inflation.

DP-340

I don't think you are very representative. Most of the PMs I have encountered/talked on DL flights are heavy domestic fliers (e.g., weekly LAX-ATL) and occasional international fliers. Additionally most do not need an AMEX boost although some have the AMEX card.

On a related topic, i.e., upgrade competition, does anyone have an estimate of the current number of PMs, GMs and FOs?

thehowieee

pm 12,234
gm 34,234
fo 1,994

dukieee

That's interesting... is that as of now or at the beginning of the membership year? Some people move up during the year - I hope they are not double counted...

thehowieee

As of posting and data from C. Clavin in data management.

Ok ... before this gets way OT ... I should have put /sarcasm tags. No one knows the numbers; they aren't published ... any numbers posted here aren't real.