Rapid Travel Chai

I received a promotion offer from Delta today. A rare event, it has been a long time since I received any promotion from Delta. This one shows the future of Delta promotions in a revenue-based world. Register here by March 31, 2016.

The offer is good for additional 5x bonus earnings on paid tickets that include nonstops between Los Angeles and Sydney or Brisbane on Delta or Virgin Australia, flown by May 31, 2016. There is no class of service or elite status variation: everyone registered gets 5x on top of their base earnings. A general member will earn 5x base + 5x promotion for 10 miles per dollar.

“For connecting itineraries, bonus miles awarded will be prorated based on the miles flown on the bonus-eligible routes as a portion of the entire ticketed itinerary.” A complicated calculation and rather stingy to exclude connecting segments.

With American and United both stepping up service to Australia & new Zealand, and American not moving to revenue-earning this promo seems a test to see if passengers can be induced to fly on tickets that might still earn far less than under the mileage-based past, while also seeing if this staunches defections at the high price end without offering and elite status qualification incentive.

These ultra-long haul flights do suffer a perception problem in revenue-based. I booked that great Singapore fare. As a United 1K I will earn 4,004 award miles and 20,620 PQMs which seems bizarre. Under such a promo the earning would still be crap and would need to be a significantly more expensive ticket to anywhere approach earning under the old mileage-based system.