Hello Flyertalk Veterans!

I'm new to the world of points and could use your expertise if you have a minute to spare.

My situation:

1. Looking to start building points with some type of airline + travel credit card.
2. I have 40,000MQM's (currently Silver) on Delta, but other then that I don't have much elsewhere.
3. Popular (~7 times year in aggregate) routes: SFO->JFK, SFO->Europe
4. Looking to place about ~$3k/mo on the card

Questions:

1. Should I be building points at Delta? I heard a rumor that for 2014 it's best to build status at Alaska and use that for Delta flights. True?
2. If so, should I get a Delta card? Are there any good promotions I should know of?

Thanks!

Just a few quick observations as it's late:

-If you don't hit the extra 10K MQMs this year and make Gold, you'll have 15,000 MQMs rolled over to next year, which'll make it easier to requalify for Silver.
-Next year, DL will be requiring you to spend at least $2,500 in "MQD" (probably figure about 80% of the value of your tickets counts towards MQD) to hit Silver. You won't get Silver status without doing that, even if you fly 49,999 or even 200,000 miles (although I don't know anyone who's flown 200,000 miles in a year and not spent at least ~$5,000 to do so ). HOWEVER, if you have a Delta-branded credit card and spend at least $25,000 on it in the calendar year, they'll waive the MQD requirement.
-DL points are widely known as difficult to use (they're referred to as "SkyPesos" around here), as Delta and its partners seem to rarely open up low-bucket award space, especially for >1 person at a time.
-Alaska points can be easier to use and they have a wide variety of partners that DL doesn't have access to, but Alaska status doesn't do much for you when flying overseas (you won't get lounge access, etc.--although you won't get lounge access as a DL Silver, either--have to be at least Gold, I think)
-If you credit your points to Alaska, it seems like getting a DL-branded card will just leave you with points split between two carriers. It's not necessarily a bad thing to have a DL card but make AS your primary program, but usually people on FT recommend concentrating your points into a single program, as that makes it easier to use (unless you fly enough to maintain at least mid-tier status in two programs--then it can be wise to diversify and not have all of your eggs in one basket). I wouldn't bother with the AS credit card, as it's not a particularly good value and high levels of spend like you're talking about doesn't get you much, but if you're going to go with Alaska instead of Delta, consider some of the better-rated non-airline cards, like the Chase Sapphire Preferred, Citi ThankYou Prestige, and other cards. A whole forum devoted to those: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...-programs-599/

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's BB: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.1.0.694 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

I'd take a peek at discussions also in the AS and DL forums- There's a bit of tension for sure. And if you plan on visiting Asia or Australia AS has some new EQM partners as of 1/15/14 that provide a solid product. Heck one can even earn on BA soon crediting to AS- but watch out as some fares don't accrue at 100%. If you hit DL Gold this year with enough MQM's a one time status match may work- but as jackal pointed out you may not want to be spending much on DL CC's in that case. There's also an offer for 50K AS miles for the Visa Signature floating around- this comes with a companion cert which I enjoy using (AS metal only). Good Luck!

If you spend $25,000 in a year on the DL AmEx PLAT card you get 10,000 MQMs toward status on DL. If you spend $30,000 on the DL AmEx RESERVE card, you get 15,000 MQMs and 15,000 RDMs.