GUWonder

That would be perfect if they could do it this year or next, since I'm likely to be a requalified PM by Feb 17, 2006 (or within 5 days of said date) and guaranteed PM through the end of February 2008.

rrgg

Not necessarily... they could do this and simultaneously end bonus miles (AMEX and so on). Then people who actually fly are the frequent flyers.

GUWonder

DL makes a lot of money -- or gets extended a lot of credit -- for selling miles to partners such as AMEX and so on. I doubt that DL would want to kill that goose which lays the golden egg (of funny money mileage currency for attempted use later in exchange for real money now).

Randy Petersen

The test was in 2005. It was unannounced and we only caught it because awardplanner.com was able to book hundreds if not thousands of awards for members during the period. We verified it was not a mistake at the time and later had it confirmed from the marketing folks.

While some of the assumptions are true here - other than DL actually going back and tightening things up, I fully expect something unique from DL in 2006.

Some of you may recall that when most major programs had capacity awards at 25,000 miles, Delta had theirs still at 30,000 miles until May 1995 (owing to their larger min. miles segments).

While I have no direct information, I think DL might do well to celebrate their 25th anniversary of a frequent flyer program by going to a single award redemption class - something quite simple. Maybe it would be 35,000 miles for a coach class ticket here in the U.S. that has no restrictions - mid-point between restricted and unrestricted. This would certainly accomplish several things. Simplicity. Huge favors from members of other programs who would likely change their business for a reasonable opportunity at freedom of award redemption.

I'm just rambling but that's a possible (even very possible) opportunity for SkyMiles.

I know i would not complain. miles are so easy to earn these days it is impossible to not cover the spread in requirements. I noticed today that DL sent me something offering a 25% bonus on all miles earned from credit card spend in the entire year of 2006 if i spend $5K a month with the card. Sounds easy enough.

GUWonder

Thank you for further insight on this matter.

I am glad to hear that DL was NOT motivated to do such "testing" to figure out how to tweak the capacity controls such that we would be stripped of our miles on less customer-beneficial terms than already.

USCGamecock

I don't see DL doing this. They have a balance sheet. No matter how many miles there are, they know most people are too cheap to use double miles on many flights. They keep thinking that they are not getting there $$'s worth by using double miles. They can give out millions of miles, but if the keep capacity control then they know only a certain amount of that expected payback will ever occur. It's like geeting cash advances for the airlines hoping you'll use them in off-peak times when it won't cost them as much to transport you. I always try to use my miles going to Europe in the summer. With a stopover (usually coming back from Russia), my ticket priced out is about $1800 for 50k SkyMiles. You know they'll never lift those controls because their partners probably won't allow it as well. Just my 2 cents worth.

gpan

On domestic awards it wouldn't be such a huge cost difference to the airline though -