GUWonder

You're welcome. Here's the link for AA's awesome promotion: http://www.aa.com/aa/i18nForward.do?...RL&title=nydbl

I suggest people qualify themselves for this promotion as soon as possible, and more so if wanting to jump off DL's customer-unfriendly ship.

Yaatri

NW DID have triple EQMs promotion earlier in the year.

secretsea18

Not only did UA have double EQM for all fare classes, they did it for previously purchased tickets!. ^ Got me to within 200 miles of requal for 1P this year!

raehl311

No they did NOT. NW offered double the standard EQM for fare classes other than LTK. There was no fare class where 3x the standard EQM was earned. That, of course, did not stop them from ADVERTISING triple EQM because they were giving out 3x base miles for fares where you already got 1.5x base miles. The promo ONLY doubled the miles though.

DL did give 2.333x standard EQM on F and YBM fares. NW flyers got screwed on that one.

mrcimino1

Yes, the current and future PMU's are "broken". Even Jeff has been quoted as admitting that. But fixing them is not an easy process. Here is another idea about how to do that. Hopefully someone in Atlanta is listening!

First, the greatest fear every airline has is that passing out Business Class upgrades will keep people from actually buying the product. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If company policy or your client paying for the ticket allows for Business Class travel, the last thing anyone would do is offer to use their personal Upgrade Cert instead. It just doesn't happen! As many have noted here, we all use these certs when we travel on "our dime" for a holiday somewhere. For those who are able to buy Business Class tickets, they will continue to do so using someone else's money, and be guaranteed a seat up front at the time of purchase. This is how it should be, and the rest of us should get what is left, if they would otherwise go empty.

So, why not give Plat's one SWU, and the right to "buy" another with 25,000 miles. Good on any fare, able to waitlist for the upgrade at time of ticketing, could possibly be confirmed earlier but may not actually be confirmed until 1 hour prior to departure. For the Diamond members, give them 3 or 4 SWU's with the same restrictions. Allow them to "buy" with miles a couple more, and earn a few more at thresholds beyond 125K (ala the NW EEP program). Then if seats up front would otherwise go empty, BEFORE upgrading any non-revs, those seats could go to the most loyal customers who happen to be on the flight and have already indicated, by waitlisting, that they have an SWU and are willing to spend it for that flight.

The nicest thing about this whole process is that it can be streamlined for the Gate Agents who have enough other things to worry about an hour before departure. You have already entered your SWU number and listed for the upgrade. And it can work for flights returning to the US also, which are not always handled by a DL employee, but maybe by a contracted ground operator instead, who has no real knowledge of the process. All they would have to do is one click to allow the DL software to process the "upgrade standby list" and accept your SWU for a nicer seat and spit out your new boarding pass. Priority on the list would be determined in the usual manner: status level first, then fare paid, then whoever listed first.

This could be a simple process for both Elites and for DL, and everyone would be HAPPY

Yaatri

Sorry, you are just WRONG. Just because you say "No they did NOT", does not make it so.
NW announced the triple EQM promotion for farebases M and above for worldwide destinations on NW and DL coded flights and KLM coded transatlantic and India flights.
Are you saying you did not get triple miles or that NO WP members got triple miles from this promotion?
I remember reading but lots of gloating from people who booked M fares so that they would be able to use there PMUs and get triple EQMs too. Some people did report getting triple EQMs. People who got screwed must have done something wrong, i.e. violated the terms and conditions of the promotion. An example be using a partner airline other than DL/NW/KL.

Gargoyle

I didn't follow the final results of people posting what they received, but my understanding was as follows:

With the promo, you got MQM's equal to triple the flown miles on M+ fares.
Without the promo, you would have gotten the standard MQM=1.5x flown miles.

So, while you did get triple MQM's, you only actually got double what you would have otherwise. That's why some people felt the wording was misleading.

Example: fly 1000 miles
without promo: earn 1500 MQM's
with promo: earn 3000 MQM's.

You earn triple base, but the promo only gives you double what you'd get normally.

(there was lots of argument about this, some people felt you'd get 4.5x base, or the 1.5x plus the 3x. I stopped reading the threads, so I can't confirm or refute that).

Yaatri

SO people made assumptions that miles would be tripled after adding the COS bonus. They weren't screwed. I always understood it to meant that the total EQMs you receive woul be three times the actual base miles. The examples made it clear that you it will be triple of the base miles, not triple of base miles plus class of service bonus. Since it wasn't giving any additional RDM's I chose not to go for this promotion. Triple EQMs would not have done anything for me. As yhe travel completed, plus travel booked was enough to take me to my goals. RDMs are valuable too, even more than EQMs sometimes.

Interpretation that you get 4.5 times the base miles is just wrong. Nowhere in the promotion was there any indication that one would get 4.5x EQMs. I had briefly thought about having my wife and kids requalify for Plat again using this promotion. But I did not want to buy an M fare. Since I wasn't interested in this promotion, I did not follow the the thread closely.

Poopdeck90210

Wow! You know DL has "blown it' when we get "nostalgic" for UA and US...

Diamond? 125K MQM? Hmm, this is a surprise. I thought the infamous 4th tier was going to come out as "Executive Platinum" at 100K MQM. This is a fiasco, to be sure. Also, let's review (once again) the "invisible" 5th elite tier... those who hold a Reserve AMEX card. If this isn't a mystery 5th tier, please explain to me how it's not!

-A

FlytheTail

The promo was a bit misleading IMO. WP members received twice the EQM that they normally would have received. So, those who booked M fares and above received the now standard 1.5 EQM x 2 for the promo = 3X base mile EQM. Technically I don't think NW/DL was wrong, but their verbiage was misleading.

Back on topic, the Diamond perks are indeed disappointing. As a longtime Platinum on NW, I'll now have to fly 50K more EQMs to get most of what I had on the new DL. On the potential plus side is the free lounge access, but that's no good to me (and many others) because I bought a 3-year membership before the fee increase... only to watch the Deltafied Dump of the lounges. On the stronger negative side, we've lost our true SWUs, ones that could be used on any fare class.

What makes it all the worse is the spin that DL is putting on this new Diamond tier. Any savvy traveler, which must include most travelers that approach 125 EQMs/year, would quickly realize that the perks fall short of what UA and AA offer at 100 EQMs/year. If only flying them was easier for me from my home airport.

Finally, the carryover EQM really isn't that new; NW used to have the "soft landing" approach where if you were Gold or higher but didn't re-quality, you were given Silver the following year. This was an unadvertised perk that now is being redefined and advertised.

FlytheTail

deleted - duplicate post.

fti

Hey children, this is FT. Why doesn't one of you prove your point by putting a link to the thread where such an offer was allegedly mentioned? Seems pretty simple. If there was a promotion, I guarantee you it was mentioned here on FT.

Onsen

I remembered the date when UA quietly slip in GA tier, I felt sick of it. But then UA did not take away the 1K benefit. Now, Delta loudly installed the Diamond tier, I don't really feel anything anymore. (Although I had over 120,000 miles last year) It just cement my decision to leave NW, for good. The company really sucks!

Yaatri

Hey grand pa, that promotion is/was well known to WP FTers. It was discussed in a sticky on this forum. Children who are not aware of this, are well, just uninformed.

ifette

I bought my lifetime two years ago I used to think that I would stick around because of this, now I am considering cutting my losses. Why through good money after bad? If I can get UGS on UA, I'm gone.