Change in Skymiles expiration policy eff. 1/1/09
 

They are going to a two-year rolling expiration - i.e. your last activity was in March 2009, your balance expires in March 2011, rather than Dec 2011 under current policy.

New Skymiles expiration policy

Not a huge change, but some non-frequent DL fliers I'm sure will get burned. At least the didn't go to 18 months like US.

yet... :eek:

Or worse yet, like AirTran where each point expires individually a certain amount of time after it is earned, regardless of activity.

Perhaps one of the mods would like to start a sticky for "Delta didn't warn me my Skymiles would expire!"

Yeah that is definitely worse

If oil continues to do what it did today, it won't really matter... :(

:( indeed. I'm going to try to cash out my miles this year.

Rolling 24 months isn't bad compared to US's 18 months. It is sad that my intial reaction was to just shrug and and accept it.

What is the point of changing rules so frequently? Just think it through, and change everything at once.

my question is, will NW announce the same rule any day now? if not, what's the point?

Frogs are much more acquiescent if you raise the temperature of the water slowly..;)

.

JetBlue, SouthWest and others do that, not just AirTran. My feeling (not that anybody asked) would be a combination set of rules.

1) With NO activity (buy miles, partner purchase, transfer, whatever) you loose your miles after a rolling 18 months.

2) No matter what you must FLY at least once every 36 rolling months or you loose your miles.

What seems to escape the general public is that these are (were) supposed to be for frequent FLYERS not frequent credit card users, or lunch buyers, etc.

There are a lot of programs out there, AMEX membership Rewards, Citibank TY points, BOA world points, that allow you to accumulate points that can be turned into miles or travel without flying. I feel that consumers in general would be better served getting points that way. Once again, it's my opinion and we all know about those :)

Now I am well aware that FF programs generate income for the airlines and that selling miles that you make sure can't be used is good for the profit point but there reaches a point when you have to take a step back and wonder if the program is helping or hurting you.

-Dave

Yes Mr. Dave but the airlines have found a way to rip off, i mean make, a few extra dollars. Continental actually controls their inventory so well that they claim to make a decent profit on their FF award tickets. DL gave AMEX miles as part of their getting out of bankruptcy financing . . . AMEX gave them away . . .
AT LEAST each CC Skymile earned isn't an MQM . . . could you imagine the flood of Medallions then??

I hate to tell you this, but that's exactly how I'm going to make DL plat this year-by spending on 3 different Amex cards-all of which give MQM's....

double post deleted