After Delta’s evisceration of elite qualification rules for next year, announcing the end of earning status by miles and flights flown; moving entirely to dollars spent; and increasing the amount of spending required for status substantially, as well as severely restricting access by premium credit card customers to its lounges, Delta acknowledged that they had moved ‘too quickly’ by ‘pulling the band aid off all at once’ and promised to moderate their changes for the coming year.
New Elite Status Requirements
They’ve now announced new qualification rules. It’s still “qualifying dollars only” but the increases are not as steep.
| Announced | Revised | |||
| 2023 | 2024 | 2024 | ||
| 3,000 | 6,000 | 5,000 | ||
| 8,000 | 12,000 | 10,000 | ||
| 12,000 | 18,000 | 15,000 | ||
| 20,000 | 35,000 | 28,000 |
New Limits For Credit Card Club Access
Instead of limiting premium co-brand Amex Reserve customers to 10 Sky Club visits per year, and Amex Platinum cardmembers to 6 visits per year, unless the cardmember spends $75,000 on their card per year, Delta’s compromise is:
- Reserve cardmembers get 15 visits per year, with a visit including all entries on a single day (so connecting flights use only one visit even if entering multiple clubs).
- Platinum cardmembers get 10 visits per year, with multiple lounge visits in a single day also counting just as one use.
- After maxing out the benefit, additional visits can be purchased for $50 per day.
Improved Lifetime Elite Benefits
To keep lifetime status members from defecting they’re improving lifetime status-earn and will make it a more significant upgrade tie-breaker.
- 1 Million Miles goes from lifetime Silver to lifetime Gold (matching United)
- 2 Million Miles goes from lifetime Gold to lifetime Platinum (matching United)
- 3 Million Miles gets lifetime Diamond (matching United)
- 5 Million Miles gets lifetime 360 status (United offers Global Services at 4 million)
They’ll calculate million miler levels using flight miles going forward, but honor existing million miler totals that were earned via qualifying miles (from credit card, bonuses etc).
Not As Stingy Converting Rollover Qualifying Miles
Members with ‘rollover qualifying miles’ – extra qualifying miles above and beyond the status they’ve earned – can convert those into redeemable miles or qualifying dollars. Delta’s conversion rates were shockingly bad when the changes were announced – 2 to 1 for turning them into SkyMiles (even though qualifying miles have historically been worth more than SkyMiles) or 20 to 1 for qualifying dollars.
Instead of converting rollover qualifying miles at 20:1 into qualifying dollars, as previously announced, they’re improving the ratio to 10:1. Along with reducing the qualifying dollars required for status earned in 2024, this is more reasonable.
Additionally, anyone with rollover qualifying mile balances over 100,000 will receive offers to extend their status.
New Choice Benefits Coming For 2025
For 2025 – not this coming year – there will be new Choice benefits offers, including the ability for Diamonds to pick $2,000 qualifying dollars and for Platinums to pick $1,000 qualifying dollars, making status earning a little bit easier in lieu of other benefits.
Additionally, Diamonds will again be able to select Sky Club membership for two choice selections.
There will be a Wheels Up statement credit offers; increased bonus miles on offer (35,000 for Diamonds and 30,000 for Platinums) as well as increased Delta travel vouchers of equivalent value to those mileage amounts at a penny per point.
What’s Next For SkyMiles?
Delta has been clear that the changes they made were not a mistake. They just had a marketing challenge. They shouldn’t have gone all the way, all at once. In fact, they even shared that they have plans to go even further than what they’ve announced.
Members sticking with the SkyMiles program get a temporary reprieve from the most drastic of changes, though it will still take more flying to earn the same status, unless also spending heavily on the most premium Delta Amex cards, and we can expect Delta to go farther soon.
I just couldn’t sleep at night knowing I’m hosing my customers.
Choice Benefits are for the 2025 Medallion Year, not launching in 2025, Gary.
It’s very clever of Delta. Everyone is going to purchase $50 day passes or $695 annual memberships, the latter of which will undoubtedly be deducted on taxes or reimbursed by some employers/clients as a business expense.
@Gary – my biggest takeaway – American’s lifetime program is now so farrrrr behind UA and DL that it’s actually laughable . Good for Delta for revising their lifetime program .
With apologies to The Who.
Won’t get fooled again
They showed their cards early. I’m folding.
I’m at 1.76M. Getting to “annual” Platinum is a big step up for 2MM. For me, that’s the biggest takeaway.
absolutely incredible that the pushback to Delta was so hard, they immediately overcorrected to “if you just have the Reserve and Platinum cards you get Silver immediately, please come back”
Wouldn’t say MM Gold ‘matches’ UNITED.
At UNITED Gold Premier gets you EconomyPlus at the time of booking. Delta puts you into the 72 hour upgrade lottery for Comfort+.
And at UNITED you get to nominate a companion to share your status.
If, indeed, upgrades are the “point” of having status, Delta has conceded nothing. Rather, is has reshuffled the same deck, dealing the high cards out in a slightly different way, with elites still competing against one another, not against Delta, for the goodies.
This faceplant and backpedal is GENIUS, just shows how DL continues to be the top airline in the world. More businesses should take this approach to rolling out new initiatives!
(just saving a certain someone some time and hot air)
OMFG! You know how many years I’ve cried in my beer as a Delta Million Miler with lifetime Silver status, eying my UA friends with envy? Now its back to Sky Club, KLM lounges, and Sky Priority for me. Not to mention higher priority on upgrades I will never get.
One advantage that DL lifetime Silvers had over Lifetime UA Gold – free advance seat selection on Light Fares (aka Basic Economy) on KLM/AF.
United announced higher earnings than Delta in the third quarter even though Delta is larger by revenue. There were only 2 weeks left in the quarter after their announcement, correlation?
For me, going to Alaska, challenge is done. I no longer have any faith in the Skymiles program or Delta in general under Bastian’s leadership. I believe that he only plans this as a brief retreat. My Delta Amex has been closed.
While I appreciate a lot of these changes – many of them (including enhanced Million Miler status, and the enhanced treatment of rollover) are not helpful in terms of “thinning the herd,” which is still needed. We still need some changes that reduce the number of Delta elites IMO.
But overall, for me, spending $25K or $30K on a delta reserve gets me a total of $5K+ MQD a year, which should keep me Platinum pretty consistently. Diamond is also attainable with the lower threshold (but who knows how long the lower threshold lasts).
It’s also funny they abandoned Delta Stays / Car rentals for MQD earning.
It’s not clear if Delta plans to continue its current domestic paid first class load factor of 75% for all First Class seats, with only 25% allotted for upgrades (say, full fare “elite” SkyMiles coach customers in Y class).
@Anthony if you just *hold* both a Platinum and a Reserve you get Silver. Absolutely wild to me. GM then requires $50k spend on the Reserve, $25k less than AA and way less than United. I don’t think even AA is this card-centric lmao
With $50 day passes, $695 memberships and memberships as a choice benefit, the Sky Clubs won’t be reduced until the Delta One lounges open.
If Delta is going to keep chasing the dollar, it needs to start adding 1-2 rows of first-class on most domestic flights.
Jon – are you sure you can double up on the $2,500 “head start” if you hold both Delta Platinum and Delta Reserve? That wasn’t clear to me.
I do also agree with FNT Delta Diamond – I think the new card thresholds will cover a lot of people’s SkyClub needs, including casual visitors. But I have long argued that the SkyClub is probably Delta’s number one point of differentiation. So it is really hard to limit access.
Everyone be nice to Mayor Tim of Deltaville. Last month he wasted dozens of hours of his life trying to explain to us that Delta wouldn’t have done something like this without data to back it up (haha), that Delta basically doesn’t need low-level medallion customers (not how I’m reading today’s announcement), and that the industry would probably follow Delta (thanks for matching me to MVP 100K Alaska!!!). Now he has to backtrack and explain why this isn’t a strategic flop, and undoubtedly will waste tens of thousands of words doing so. He’ll probably also mention that Delta earns a premium vs. United when flying over the Pacific, and could even toss in some commentary about how poorly American performs in New York. He might even claim that Delta is the world’s best airline.
My last Delta flight, the ground crew and flight crew were the kindest and friendliest I ever encountered. Even had a big show with certificates, applause, and pictures, for two passengers attaining the Million Miler. I secretly wondered if they were embarrassed about their bossman ripping off the Band-Aid.
Anyway, I ‘ve just booked a domestic American Airlines flight. My AA flight earlier this year, a domestic leg connecting to a long-haul transcontinental was fabulous, with professional yet easy going flight staff. And I was just a lowly One World Silver. Now that AA freely matched my DL Platinum and gave me AA Platinum, with two freely checked bags, I’m going to try AA again on a simple direct domestic flight.
I mean, status helps me because I don’t always want to book first class (or business class). But if the status isn’t worth it, then I don’t care. DL has bjigger aircraft and and better schedules for my trips; but, I don’t like the CEO insulting me. So I am going to take my time and enjoy checking out the competition. Blogger advice is helpful; yet, sometimes I just have to do my own thing for myself.
Besides the lifetime improvements its just a temporary reprieve as you’ve said. They’re not done cutting benefits. Switch to a better program elsewhere.
@Anthony, keep dreaming, there is no such thing as “thinning the herd”. Delta knows exactly how many elites there are in the herd, and continues to give out status like candy to corporate travel managers for their employers.
A vast chunk of OPM status customers is not earned. We have at least 500+ DL status holders in my not even that large company that are gifted this way
@Anthony yeah, if you scroll down to the terms it’s very clear you get one $2,500 bonus per card *type*. So one Platinum bonus and one Reserve bonus
and Anna has a good point, the agreement DL has with my employer means our travel dept just hands out GM to every employee who asks
@Jaime Anderson: I realized this shortly after the merger with Northwest, Not sure why it’s taking everyone else so long!
@Jim: Delta actually probably doesn’t need the customers they are trying to fire. People who pay an annual fee for unlimited lounge visits but don’t charge to the card are just crowding up the lounge.
@ Gary — Speechless on the LIfetime changes. 3 MM goes from LT Gold to LT Diamond? That can’t be.
This means nothing. Enjoy my zero card spend. Still a frequent buyer play rather caring about the loyal customers that actually fly….
@jim LMAO…comment of the day!
@Christopher Raehl – I don’t agree that Delta doesn’t need the customers they tried to fire because they are just crowding up the SkyClub. First, those customers do matter to Delta because they had to buy a ticket (and may have bought the ticket from someone else absent the option to kill time in Delta’s lounge, and the people with SkyClub access will tend to be the folks who are buying more expensive tickets). Second, Delta was pretty transparent that their goals with this whole process were to thin the ranks of the elites (they are, as we all know, a super premium airline /s) while also driving up CC spend. Just my two cents.
It’s still complex as heck compared to AA’s program which is now the gold standard in airline loyalty. DL will drive more business and repeat customers away with this minor tweek.
@ Gary — The takeaway here is that people value having status more than the actual benefits. Thinning the herds to better deliver benefits was a stupid idea. As long as people can put that idiotic tag on their bag and brag to their friends that “they are Diamond with Delta”, they feel important. It doesn’t matter that they never get an upgrade. Delta is going to have a VERY difficult time getting people to put money (not less) on their AMEX cards. People are dumb, but probably not THAT dumb.
Why would a Delta Platinum Card and Delta Reserve get the exact same Headstart? Make some differentiation considering one card cost 4X the other. And not offering either unlimited or perhaps 40-50 Skyclub visits annually with their most expensive card(with poor spending rewards) was another miss. And the 1 MQD for $10 spend is still has wayyyyy too much lost opportunity to use.
These changes beat offering nothing but they are very weak. And most likely very temporary.
Hey Scotch Kirby,
we caught on that United, in its earnings release, ADJUSTED OUT profit sharing for its employees in order to produce an ADJUSTED margin that was higher than Delta’s.
Says alot about the value of employees that United classifies profit sharing as “unusual” while profit sharing is a core part of Delta’s expenses – which is why their employees have now accrued $1 billion in profit sharing so far in the first 3 quarters.
We are presuming that United doesn’t plan to be regularly profitable or at least don’t plan to share it regularly with employees.
I’m betting your bonuses also exclude employee profit sharing because you want the most you can get and you will get it anyway.
The reason why you haven’t seen near as much status match activity from DL customers is because United is considerably smaller in key corporate markets than they were pre-covid including NYC. All those cuts at EWR in order to keep the operation from melting down played right into delivering all kinds of high value customers to Delta, right? I wouldn’t suggest that you try to raise your elite requirements either. And of course you don’t have anywhere close to the amount of loyalty program revenue that Delta gets in the first place. Heck, they spill more elite revenue than you earn in total.
The employees and customers always come up on the short end of the stick but you are guaranteed to do just fine.
psst. don’t talk too loud about your fourth quarter expectations so loudly. Delta will be right back on top… the 3 cents more you earned in the 3rd quarter would have vaporized if United employees earned as much as Delta employees in profit sharing.
@ Tim Dunn — Typical narcissistic answer, diverting to another subject. The topic is loyalty programs not profits. PEOPLE MATTER MORE THAN PROFITS.
NOT EVEN CLOSE TO ENOUGH FOR ME!!! SEE YA DELTA…No way I’m hanging with this BS.
Btw…tim dunn…enough already dude!!!
@Big Tee I’m glad to see Delta decided to really celebrate millionmiler milestones, mine came over the summer with only one congrats from a flight attendant on my flight from DTW to ICN, so there were plenty of crew and time to mark it.
These changes are really good from my point of view. I am not a credit card point player look for for Skyclub access. I travel frequently for work, and not at a company that would buy DeltaOne. The change in LF status is big, my loyalty is now valued more than the 3 x year leisure flyer with an AMEX card. The spend levels are more realistic for the economy class road warrior. Upgrades will still be rare, but at least I might the first page of the list 🙂
Despite some posters strenuous assertions otherwise, butts in seats pay the bills, and the pushback from us was heard and addressed. Maybe the Skyclubs will still be crowded, not a problem for me as I am not paying for it by membership or credit card annual fee
37K miles from 2MM. As soon as I hit that I’m done except when UA or AA are not a better option.
DL already opened its kimono so we know what’s coming down the pike. I’m not that stupid.
This sounds like a typical negotiation for DL. Make it painful and then back off some. Now people are happy for losing less.
I was waiting to see what changes would be made. Based on what I’ve read, the Delta Reserve card still doesn’t look work the money. The Amex Platinum look much better. I’m not going to spend that kind of money to be limited on access to the club. I still plan on ditching my Delta Reserve card! (Already picked up the Chase Sapphire Reserve card in the past week. Lots of options for club visits!)
Anybody who still defends DL as “the best US carrier”?
Needs to take a hard look at this latest mess. DL just showed you who they are and what they are about– Credit Card Spend and the AMEX relationship is all they really care about.
If they could book that revenue without flying those pesky planes with those obnoxious passengers? I assure you they would do so.
@Tim Dunn
Heh. I’m sorry you are forced to live in a DL hub city.
For those of us close to more competitive hubs, with a dozen choices of carriers to London, Asia or SPacific? Yeah, after 4 million miles on everybody? I will never spend another night stranded in that third world bazaar called ATL. If Stockholm Syndrome is a thing? So is Atlanta Angst.
hahaha oh hell yes, hook this Dunn rageposting straight into my veins!!
Gene,
you missed or most likely ignored the part about UA’s profit sharing being just 75% of DL’s even though UA made more.
But people more than profits, right?
I’ve sat out Delta status and miles earning and quietly watched for the last 10 years or so.
From my perspective Delta regularly devalues their program beyond even what they think they can get away with just to see how far they can push their “loyalty” members. Then they dial it back and act like they’re doing everybody a favor. And amazingly, for the most part everybody falls for it – the blogs always come back with “Delta realized they messed up and they’re doing right by their customers by dialing it back”. Except they’re not. They’re abusing their loyal customers while still getting credit for “caring”.
It’s baffling to watch. You guys are all getting played. It’s plain as day and somehow you don’t even know it.
@ Tim Dunn — Well, duh. Of course I read that. You missed my point — YOU act like the best airline is whichever is most profitable. Delta has primarily funded its highly-touted profit sharing and excessive executive compensation through devaluations of its mileage currency. I’m sure another devaluation will be used to fund this little rollback as well. That well is starting to run dry though, so they are banking on their new-found AMEX well for their next act. Howevever, that well may run dry faster than expected.
@Santa Barbarian, completely agree with your comment comment.
@BigTee, don’t look back, American is much better onboard than Delta.
Gene,
we get it.
You are a Delta loyalty reject and nobody can win because you can’t meet the requirements that Delta set for loyalty levels and you can’t meet those levels while many other customers can.
Delta gets more money from its loyalty program than any other airline in the world. They know what they are doing.
Delta employees enjoy the best profit sharing in the industry. Delta stockholders show that Delta is the most valuable airline in the world.
You and only you are the one that is out of touch.
Move on and make us all, including yourself, happier.
Delta = Aviation Terrorist Organization.
Tim –
Take the L. Your comments are so laughingly biased we cant even read past the first sentence anymore.
Delta blew it.. and here you are trying to paint these rollbacks as a welcome surprise, I am sure. Just like DCS and Hilton
@ Tim — You have it completely backwards. Delta is the one who is being rejected here. I could easily met the new thresholds, but why on earth would I want to allocate a significantly larger share of my travel and credit card spend budgets to such a mediocre airline and such lousy credit cards? Again, Delta being profitable does not equal them offering good value to their customers. In fact, it seems Delta is so profitable because they offer such poor value to their customers.
@Gary: Is the Gold Status at 1M retroactive for existing million milers, or only new million milers?
Thanks for the summary of the changes.