Rapid Travel Chai

Delta SkyMiles changed leaked early.

As a Diamond Medallion, 2-million miler, this series of quick posts explores the state of SkyMiles and airline loyalty programs.

Posts in this series:

• Airline Loyalty Program Managers Don’t Use Their Own Programs
• Have Revenue-Based Loyalty Programs Worked?
• Solve Your Sky Club Overcrowding Problem on Someone Else
• Huge Middle Finger to Your MQMs
• Table of Uses for SkyMiles Versus Everyone Else
• Delta Doesn’t Want Any More Million Milers
• How About this MQM Conversion Option?
• More to come

The Delta SkyMiles changes leaked early. My first read-through the biggest hit is the insulting treatment of Rollover MQMs.

Delta has had Rollover MQMs since 2009. Those balances, including spend that has already happened this year, are getting severely devalued.

Rollover miles, in combination with credit card waivers, worked as follows to earn status for a new year (international residents exempted from credit card waiver requirement):

• Silver: 25,000 MQMs and $25,000 credit card waiver
• Gold: 50,000 MQMs and $25,000 credit card waiver
• Platinum: 75,000 MQMs and $25,000 credit card waiver
• Diamond: 125,000 MQMs and $250,000 credit card waiver

I have over 750,000 MQMs so that reasonably was expected to be:

• Up to 10 years of Platinum if meeting the $25,000 credit card waiver annually
• Up to 6 years of Diamond if meeting the $250,000 credit card waiver annually

Effective 2024, MQMs will go away and you can covert them to MQDs or redeemable miles at preposterously low rates:

• 20:1 MQMs to MQDs
• 2:1 MQMs to redeemable miles

750,000 MQMs thus get dumpster fired into:

• 37,500 MQDs = one year of Diamond
• 375,000 redeemable miles = insert joke about absurd Delta award prices

Message received loud and clear: whatever you have done and spent on Delta in the past, the joke is on you, today is a new day and the counter resets at nearly zero.

A companion to this is that the Million Miler program will change to only counting flown miles with Delta and airline partners. This is more in line with competitors than the prior any MQM counts method.

Because Delta counted all MQMs, each Million Miller level generally required double the miles of competitors for comparable status, e.g. Delta currently requiring 2 million miler for Gold while United requires 1 million miler. No word, and unlikely, that Delta will adjust downward, since clearly the focus is to get customers out the door the moment their spending drops to lower levels.