DWFI

Here's the thing though. Delta's C-suite is very smart. The people who have massive spend and massive amounts of flying (and thus, those who will reap rewards under this configuration) likely want nothing more than a nice long week at home with the family. They certainly don't want to fly more.

And of course, if you are earning 3M miles a year from your intl J tickets, you don't care about the miles game either...because you have too much money for it to matter. When you take a family vacation, you book whatever fits the schedule for cash, not plan 10 months in advance to redeem some award.

I can't recall the exact statistic, but I think AS once published that 97% or so of their awards were redeemed on AS or partner domestic and Y international and just 2 or 3% were international premium cabin. Basically that means that the people who actually redeem awards are basically all kettles, because the vast, vast majority of FTers redeem primarily intl premium awards.

So more miles for those who don't use them, and less for those who do. It's really quite brilliant.

AAExPlat

Except most people mileage running are doing it to save money and would be unlikely to do as you suggest for obvious reasons...if I want to spend that kind of money, I would simply buy my tickets for the exact days I want and take out the guess work...

Bonehead

One more time...

rankourabu

And one could argue, most people do MRs to maintain/top up status, not to collect RDMs, and it appears earning status miles wont change, and will be distance based.

RDMs have long ago stopped being cost-efficient when acquired by flying, even on MRs - there are many cheaper ways of acquiring RDMs.

javabytes

The friendly bloggers and columnists breaking the story conveniently omitted that little nugget.

They say this is to reward their best customers more. Why cap it then? All this does is piss off the person who buys $15k J tickets.

Their MO is pretty clear - give everybody less... some a lot less than others.

stockmanjr

Didn't someone(TWA maybe?) try to convert to a revenue based program in the 90's? I remember reading an article that many corporate travel departments weren't very happy about this with the abuse it allowed. I'm sure as you said that they've chatted with corporate contracts and companies will likely put safeguards in place to prevent this activity. I also do wonder if miles will be earned by the corporation instead of the business traveler.
Cheers
Howie

drewguy

This is a critical point and seems to be missed by the two articles posted by OP.

As such, the different rates for different elites seem hardly different from the current mileage bonuses given to elites for RDMs - it's just that the RDM basis is $$ instead of distance.

ZZYZXROAD

Do a search and you'll see I called this a year ago. Once pandora was opened with cash for miles with WN years ago, all took notice. I almost never see MR guy on WN. This should not be news to anyone who travels a lot. The airlines gave a lot away for years IMO and within 5 to 10 years, most programs will look nothing like they do today.

I think we will see all miles/points/dollars can only be accrued if using 'OUR' credit card. We shall see.

We are now looking at the largest viewed and replied thread in FT history. This one will be huge.

Bonehead

It's in the PDF, but not in the text in the sticky. Seems like the DL folks took a while to notice it as well.

ETA: I now see this line in the sticky: "Medallion Qualification - Same as 2014."

Since the DL folks were freaking out about status qualification for a while (as were the folks in this forum), I think that aspect of this change should have gotten a bit more emphasis in the post.

Renard

how long will it take for UA to follow? Not long... and if you don't think so, you are kidding yourself. The end is near. Start looking for your obscure star allliance program overseas as it'll probably be awhile before they make the change.

nova08

Yes, corp travel departments will have to continue to evolve to watch for borderline behavior of employees going after the higher fare classes

Regardless though, that was a different time when there were many many legacies. With 3 legacies things have changed.

Amazing to think these airlines just a few years ago offered several DEQM promo's just to lure travelers and now they have slashed the FF program as we know it, almost doing away with the EQM concept.

bob_the_d

i am going to get flamed for this.

i travel in the NE corridor a lot. that either means i take the US shuttle to DC or i hop on the acela. i chose the acela often times as their F car is actually pretty nice (feels more like an F experience than it does on airlines nowadays). but AGR was pretty much:

2x$ TQP for all ticket dollars with a base of 100.
certain acela city pairs get 500 in J and 750 in F.
status tiers at 5000, 10000, 20000.

i get that the airline perks with upgrades, security, boarding and all that are different, but i liked that it was really simple and there wasn't much ambiguity with how you qualify, and by the way it was a completely revenue based system, it didn't care how many miles you traveled or anything. you spend more, you get more. the redeemable points were also a multiplier of your dollars spent.

not quite apples to apples i understand, not quite apples to oranges either.

apples to... pears maybe. there's some applicability i have to believe to the two. i for one wouldn't care too much if they made it revenue based completely.

i wouldn't care too much if they made it a strict miles flown model either.

what i hate is the constant changes, modifications, and general state of mess the programs are in. i believe if you just pick a system, make it simple, make it clear, there might be some discontent in the beginning but i find people get far less upset in the long run if it's simple enough for everyone to understand what they're dealing with.

edit: actually holy crap. i just ran through my head as a consumer what it would be like for UA's MP management and IT group to actually convert the program from miles to dollars and how much of a cluster that would be in execution. ugh.

LASUA1K

This is why today, I've taken all my ORD-MIdwest Destinations to WN. ORD-MSP on an RJ and earn 1000 miles or fly WN where with status I get double points on dollar spent. Every MDW-Midwest destination basically earns me a free one way somewhere. But I would have never flown WN if it wasn't for UA sticking RJ's on all my routes. I still fly UA or AA on hub routes basically. ORD-NYC-IAH-LAX-SFO. Every thing else goes to WN now.

This might make me think twice and fly UA to MSP instead of WN. Short last minute flights will really win in this.

I hate change, and I would rather it just stay the way it is. And I think the majority would like it to stay the way it is.

CO_Nonrev_elite

As said, UA will run to match this. They copy every negative change DL makes (PQD etc) and ZERO of the positive changes ( WIFI, TV, first class on RJ's, limited distances on RJ, all aisle access business class, food, free booze, water, pillows, blankets, nice people, quality operation etc).

I'll also assure you, if there is any net gain in miles accrued, the redemption levels will increase.

SJOFlyer

writing to COPA to encourage them to start their own FF program... This is just beyond ridiculous and takes all my incentives to keep flying for business.