Broader concern is the difficulty obtaining travel insurance which will recognize the value of award travel. Essentially you need "replacement cost" coverage, rather than "reimbursement" coverage because (to my knowledge) the insurer is unlikely to recognize that miles or points have any cash value for reimbursement purposes.

..now DL has confirmed that if you use miles to UG on a revenue ticket, e.g. a Y, B, M int'l fare, and then you change the revenue ticket within the 72 hr window prior to departure...YOU WILL LOSE YOUR MILES!

Even on a Y class ticket.

Just in case there's anyone who hasn't grasped what this is, quite, yet... in DL's own published words, it is:

:-: best in class :-:

Here's what Michelle has to say. Obviously she is copying from the pre-prepared script that DL had to hand for just this eventuality. This is truly amazing stuff. They have further scripts to hand, guys, I can't wait! This is the most entertainment DL have offered in years.

Meantime, Jeff R. is laughing so loud in the basement at ATL, I can hear him from the desert. Nice one, Jeff ^

Jeff, hardcore DL fans like DL757ATL thought it would be a cold day in h*** before they would agree with the villainous RTS, banished over here....but you've achieved the impossible. Even DL apologists now realize the enormity of their mistaken investment in SM and DL tickets over the past couple of years.

The violently negative reaction on FT is precipitated not just by this act, but by the dawning horror of what this means for trust in the value of SM. People now know it's about to get much worse, it will do without notice. And they're going to be right.

Taking your view, if I were you Jeff, I'd roll out the MQM/YBM changes now, and strike while the iron's hot. Take the collateral now, don't drip feed it out. It can't affect the stock price at this moment.

-----

Response To Your Questions
Thank you for your feedback. Understandably, there has been a lot of traffic on this topic and we�ve been reviewing all your comments. We see several questions have popped up repeatedly and we�d like to address those.

�Can I still make a new Award booking within 72 hours of departure?�
Yes, you can. There is no change to the booking window. You can and always have been able to book Award Tickets within 72 hours of departure. It is important to note that bookings within 72 hours of scheduled flight departure time are non-refundable per the new policy.

[Mean redemption costing must be incremented from 38.8k to nearer 50k to maintain SM writeoff. That AmEx bailout of trillions of SM was more costly than we admitted. Too many SMM redeeming on AF in J at low level, and now they're charging us at the hard JV accounting rate, gotta plug the gap!]

�Why not allow changes to my Award Ticket within 72 hours? Or, why not allow changes within 72 hours for a fee?�
As previously stated, allowing changes within 72 hours would result in unused Award Seats. The same reasoning applies for why no changes will be allowed for a fee, even if the origin/ destination doesn�t change. It simply would not address the issue at hand - seats going unused.

[Bwahahaha! Don't you know? It's not seats going unusued, dummy! It's MILES GOING UNREDEEMED AT HIGHER LEVELS!! We know the metric, gotta move from 38.8k ---> 50k per Y roundtrip redemption. 134.2k----->222.5k per TATL J redemption, to eliminate all net revenue negative flow under JV accounting. In one fell swoop we eliminate your ability to find those low level awards and we're done and dusted with you]

�Is Delta going to be implementing one-way Awards?�
We know that many of you have been asking for this ability. We appreciate your feedback and will continue to evaluate.

[Snowball's chance in heck of that! Why would we? All of a sudden, all those tens of millions of SM accounts that have 12.5k, or even 20k, available, would have access to flight inventory. Right now, they don't. Black, and white. Suckers!! Muahahaha!]

�Are the one million unused Award Seats due to the �glitches� in the Award Calendar?�
The issues that you may have experienced from the Award Calendar do not contribute to the unused Award Seats. We have done a lot to improve the Award Calendar, and we�ll continue to make improvements to this tool.

[No, the Award Calendar has evolved, originally without conscious effort on our part, into a key revenue fence. The glitches and lack of search ability on DL.COM introduce substantial hysteresis into redemption. We discovered this to our delight and have since focused energy on honing its incompetence in ways that are defensible to DoT but that result in large net increments in redemption costs. Sometimes, DL.COM showed its real hand, but the apologists on FT peddled their wares and persuaded dubious Medallions that it was a "glitch" or a "mistake" and was "insignificant."

But I gotta say it was hard to excuse that screen shot showing the 675k from PHL to FCO in J!! :-: best in class :-: alright! Muahahaha!

Now, SM Medallions, let's talk turkey. We will indeed be making further "improvements" to the Award tool. These will consist of:
blocking the ability to search independently for partner segments which currently only show at LOW level. We find this quite annoying but even the Gaullists haven't bought into the TRIPLE-OCTO-TIER SM system.]

Hopefully, this helps to clarify some of your questions. This policy change was not an easy decision but it was the right one.

Thanks,

Michelle, SkyMiles | Delta Social Ambassador
Connect with us at Twitter.com/Delta & Facebook.com/Delta

[Yes. By contrast, for some customers, the decision to abandon ship in 2009 and pay UA/CO for the hundreds of itins since then was the right one, it has been golden. And it wasn't really hard at all.....just faxed CO ten years of WP Plat cards, comped over to Plat, sub in OP number and start requal as CO OPE.

But now I AGREE WITH JEFF!! Stay with SM! It's best in class.

Don't all jump ship now to UA and compete as 1Ks for the INTL UG and SWU inventory and the low-level F awards on Star partners! Aaaargh!]

I guess I just trust the companies I do business with unless they give me a reason not to. Also - since we all know these new rules now - we can "govern ourselves accordingly". I've been through periods where I knew there was a fair chance I'd have to "86" a trip due to a lengthy illness of a family member - and planned accordingly in terms of cancellation policies (I almost always use hotels with very generous cancellation policies). OTOH - if - G-d forbid - I dropped dead before the next trip we have planned - reckon my husband would have more serious problems than worrying about a refund of FF miles.

You are confusing me with someone else. I have been mostly CO for a long time (since I moved to NE Florida 15 years ago) - especially in connection with AMEX MR (that relationship will of course be ending soon). For a period of time (can't remember exactly when) - CO and DL were partners - and I took some CO reward flights on DL when they were partners. For reasons I could never understand - the DL reward flights were easier to book and cheaper to pay for (in miles) using the CO reward website. CO and DL haven't been partners for a while now - and I haven't booked reward flights like that since the partnership ended. I don't know what I'll be doing with DL in the future. When the AMEX/CO partnership ends - most of my MR points will be in CO. Don't know what I will do with those either. With what's going on in the world these days - home is looking pretty good to me. FWIW - neither AA nor UA has much service here out of JAX - so they're not very high on my radar screen. Robyn

P.S. I can hardly keep track of my own FF stuff - especially during a busy month like this one (in terms of other things). If you'd like to take care of all of this for me - I'd appreciate it .

Somewhat OT - but what on earth did you do to get banned from an airline chatboard? Robyn

I know just about nothing about travel insurance. I only bought it once. When we booked a cruise to Japan (probably a stupid purchase - travel agent pushed the insurance). We had to cancel the trip while we were still entitled to a 100% refund on the cruise. And you don't get your money back. Just a credit against a future trip (which we took - minus the cruise).

Overall - I'd say that when you're over 60 - have elderly parents - and/or have significant health problems - about the only time insurance might make sense is for an expensive cruise (I know very little about cruises and refund policies - but that seems to be the area where travel agents are most insistent about travel insurance). Perhaps another would be for an expensive trip to a resort where you pay in advance and there is a 3+ day or more cancellation policy. Just about all the hotels we use these days have 24 hour cancellation policies. And if something happens with the air part of a trip as a result of something unexpected - figure I'll deal with the death or illness in the family - or the hurricane - first - and worry about the air stuff later.

FWIW - if I am reading between the lines correctly here - it seems that a fair number of Delta "status people" were abusing their status. Making reservations - and then not showing up for no reason other than a change of mind about taking a trip (I looked at the stats - and I suspect most people who didn't show up weren't not showing up due to family illness or death or missed connections or floods). Is there a different spin on this? If not - that's bad. And if enough people did that - it spoiled things for everyone else. We have a 48 hour cancellation policy for tee times at our golf club. But never have a problem with a morning cancellation if we have something like an unexpected dental emergency. Because most people who make tee times don't cancel them on a whim. IMO- people who abuse systems make it more difficult for people who try to play by the rules. Robyn

The official reason given was that my postings were "disruptive." To what, and for whom, well, that's always a judgment call. The same over at BA although that actually occurred later than on DL

The funniest thing of all is that I maintain civil dialog with a number of BA and even DL managers on these boards, who in private did sometimes agree with the criticisms I made of their programs and product. It is the apologist faction who seems to have the biggest issue with such criticism, using RBP to encourage censorship.

For DL, I think part of the reason was that I used a key phrase to describe the SM program. Actually it is not my phrase. You know, it is the phrase dreamed up by Jeff R. and Rick, and plastered on the LAX T5 billboards as well as Sky Mag and in other corporate propaganda for some time.

To be clear, I never call for anyone to be censored. I believe in the FA and support it, no matter how distasteful people's statements may be. The alternative is always worse, it becomes about who has access to authority to silence people.

But, it does however fit well with the prevailing theme over at the DL board. In their own words, it is....
wait for it.....
[drum roll]....

:-: best in class :-:

I don't think my view is isolated, now. Even hardcore SL SM fans agree that this latest SM policy sure is
:-: best in class :-:

Wow! The hornets nest is buzzing over at DL over the immediate SM program degradation!

Check the thread over there. Some people are even thinking of coordinating a response by mass booking a load of fully refundable J and Y tix on a specific LHR 764 and then orchestrating a mass-cancellation at the last moment. A suddenly near-empty 764 to LHR on a given business day, well, that would certainly escalate the issue in a major way, and even Jeff R. would have to think twice, quickly. That would send a message to DL management!

It's clear from the poll that there are enough frustrated DL SMM to occupy a large proportion of both cabins using this technique, if they coordinated their action behind the scenes.

The DL FT board is angry!

But what else to expect? The response to the :-: best in class :-: program seems to be best-in-class action!

Edit: watch DL's inventory management to see if they twitch and cut any forward-looking J/Y fare buckets to pre-empt such action!

Please follow discussion on DL Forum--link above. Thanks.