J.Edward

Per our friends at the DL forum, SkyMiles will be introducing MQDs - Medallion Qualifiying Dollars - for the 2014 program year with $2,500 - $12,500 being required for US based residents of the program.

Also of note: customers who spend $25k annually via a DL AX product will waived from the MQD requirement.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delta...ls-inside.html

So if that's where DL's going what implications are there, if any, for MileagePlus for 2013, 2014, 2015+?

787fan

it would really suck if UA and AA follow those footsteps and drastically remove any incentive for more leisure/casual flyers to stay loyal to any single airline.

so now we have to qualify by segments, distance, and dollars ..... talk about a mess

bocastephen

As long as I can get out of the requirement by using a credit card (with which I can manufacture fake spend, see various milesbuzz threads for more info on how to do this), I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it...I'm sure the DL forum is in full meltdown mode right now.

Plan B, just move my MP account offshore so I'm no longer a "US based member".

PHL

DL tried this about 10 years ago with a lot of backlash. So did US. They both recanted.

If this move sticks, it's only a matter of time before the rest fall in line....

Ctheexpat

The requirements are so low that anyone not meeting them has no right to consider himself an Elite anyway. Why do you think they are doing this? I've read here on FT people bragging about earning 1K for under $3000. That's just ridiculous and all 3 major airlines should do what they can to weed those people out (including not allowing credit card pend to count since that's easy to get around)

The fact there are 1K's who've earned that with spends under $3000 is bad enough, but its laughable when they come here, complain about UA and call themselves one of Uniteds "best customers"

njcommodore

Looks like DL may have already pulled it. Doesn't show up on the website any more. Quite a test balloon. 27 pages in less than 12 hours.

mike1968

Conversely to the $3k 1k is the $10-$20k *S *G. Falling in this category, I'd have no issue, but it should be an either or type threshold, not both like was floated over at DL. I suspect the uproar would be deafening in this era of social media ADD where no one really reads anything. Imagine seeing the new table that if you spend $20k you make 1k, but missing the fine print that says you still need 100k EQM and you only made 45k getting the *S parting gift / sucker punch.

TWAWORLD

Delta's mileage program is already the worst in the industry. This just helps keep it at the bottom. I would never fly Delta even if they have great ontime statistics due to their mileage program.

DanTravels

This sounds sensible to me. So, maybe something like:

Premier 1K® - 100,000 PQM or 120 PQS or 10,000 PQD
Premier Platinum - 75,000 PQM or 90 PQS or 7,500 PQD
Premier Gold - 50,000 PQM or 60 PQS or 5,000 PQD
Premier Silver - 25,000 PQM or 30 PQS or 2,500 PQD

I suppose the question remains of who gets the PQD if I spend $$$ on a ticket for someone else - or, for that matter, the other way around. My job lets me have the miles I earn, and an organization can't exactly have Premier status anyway, but if I buy tickets for my kids, I'd like to get the credit for that, since they don't fly enough to benefit from it.

escapefromphl

It's always gonna be 120 PQS/100K PQM & 10K PQD, they aren't going to give someone 1K for 1 transpac RT in F, whats the point of that?

The person who flies gets the PQD, anything else makes no sense.

uastarflyer

It doesn't sound sensible at all. It sounds like a nightmare.

jbsay

Profits ultimately matter, not revenue. Granted, the two are correlated, but somebody who makes 1K with $3000 spend (3cpm) is almost certainly flying low-demand routes, probably on mileage runs. UA needs to fill marginal seats on these routes to break even (at best), which is why such low fares are offered.

Of course a 1K who spends $20k is more "worthy" of elite status than a $3k spender. But what about, say, $3k vs $6k spend in discount economy? Hard to say which is better from UA's perspective if the bigger spender is flying out of more expensive, higher-demand routes with planes that UA can easily fill with other flyers.

LAX

Bolded mine. Once a spend requirement is in place, it would only be a matter of time that the threshold is jacked up over time. It's a slippery slope once it gets started.

LAX

escapefromphl

I don't see how United can make any profit on a 1K spending $3K taking mileage redemption into consideration. But if they introduce spend thresholds, they need to be very careful not to destroy the aspirational nature of status. If the thresholds are too far out of reach of the average customer and you will risk losing them entirely.

I would rather they tied things like upgrade priority to total spend, like than having the upgrade list ordered by status and then spend over the previous 12 months. Or by having spend targets, such as awarding 2 extra GPU's per $20K.

UrbaneGent

It's only a matter of time, we all know this. Eventually it will happen. UA has to have different teams of people in revenue management running different scenarios. Revenue based tiers or a mix of rev/mileage flown tiers will be introduced. Slowly at first, seeping it's way into the mix just like all the other fees. Reading some of the threads at DL "oh not too bad"....just wait two years what monster it grows up to be.

Side note: How many flyers are out there who have spent $3,000 for their 1K status? There always going to be those very few, but there can't be that many.

Cheers,
UG

EXACTLY! This is what I mean by UA having teams of people going through all these scenarios. When, not if, they introduce spend thresholds (or some sort of rev-based tiers), it will start out small....where people will say, "that isn't too bad..." until a small change here, another there....