The primary benefits of flying Delta have been that they’re a more reliable carrier than competitors, and that their crews are marginally friendlier than United’s and American’s. However,
- The reliability gap between Delta and competitors has narrowed.
- They have an intentional strategy of having a less rewarding frequent flyer program relying instead on the airline being good to fly to bring customer into their ecosystem and keep them.
- But this year they told a lot of those customers that they aren’t actually valuable.
Delta told customers that to be a valuable customer they were going to have to step up their business with the airline and with its co-brand American Express cards. In fact, they’d have to upgrade to the most expensive cards for even their spending to fully count towards status.
The airline planned to go from $20,000 per year in spend for top tier status plus 125,000 qualifying miles to caring only about spend – on Delta and on its premium credit cards. The new requirement was going to be $36,000 qualifying spend – with other elite tiers going up as well. And that same top elite would be turned away from Delta’s lounges when redeeming miles for the least expensive award tickets, and limited in how often they could visit clubs with their premium card which had previously offered unlimited access.
Customers were quick to flee Delta. Loyalty Status Company CEO Mark Ross-Smith says that “100,000+ high-value frequent flyers did a Status Match in 2023” and that this was “[m]ainly driven by the Delta SkyMiles changes.”
A month later Delta rolled back these changes for 2024, while claiming to be committed to making them in the future. Clearly they realized they’d made a mistake in imposing massive changes all at once (without even giving customers anything more in return). The question is when they’ll try again, and what customer reaction will be to getting boiled slowly like a lobster.
- How many of these customers come back, versus sticking to the airline they matched to?
- Especially because Delta so far says the reprieve is just for a year – they’ll still be firing customers, just doing it later.
SkyMiles are worth less than competitor currencies. Delta’s quality advantage is eroding. But what they demand from customers is on a path to be far greater than at any other airline.
If you live in Atlanta or the Upper Midwest you’re hub captive to the airline and don’t want to connect. But if you have a choice, does it still make sense to stick with Delta? And if it does what would the last straw be?
I am based in DEN but have been loyal to Delta since 2015. I ditched Delta for United. I made sacrifices in flight routing to maintain loyalty from a competitor hub city after moving here and the program changes made it clear they didn’t care about me as a customer. I moved my spend to a United co-brand card (>$100k/yr) and I am flying my last trip on D1 this summer since it was booked prior to the changes. Goodbye Delta
They made one positive change: 1MM now have lifetime Gold Medallion, not Silver (barely a notch above self-loading cargo). I think they figure that nearly all those who benefited from the pre-1995 counting of all miles from any source toward MM totals are now retired, if not flying with their own wings, so most of the people who will benefit from this fly a good deal and therefore still matter.
@efrem mallach – You are absolutely correct that for everyone who is already in the 1MM Club getting the automatic bump to Gold is really a nice enhancement. Alas I really needed the MQM’s to stay around for at least one, if not two years to help get me to the 1MM, as now the path for those last 150K won’t likely happen.
That said, the only glimmer of good news for my situation is that after my Platinum level MQM’s get pulled out for 2024, I will still have at least $150K of rollover MQM’s so I can at least convert a portion of those toward obtaining Platinum status for all of 2025 as well. In the last few weeks I’ve already moved over $80,000 of annual spend away from my Delta Reserve card, so while I’ll enjoy Platinum for two more years, when 2026 arrives that might just about end my Delta experience as I’ll be way better off switching all my flying to another carrier.
I live near Atlanta and have used Delta or its partner Virgin Atlantic 99.9% of the time. I just have a Gold Delta Sky Miles AMEX card that I use for everything except groceries (at Kroger so I can get $/gal off my gas I buy there) I’ve used my accumulated miles to fly to the U.K. 3 times since 2011. The points needed to fly there now are ridiculously high! (used to be 50,000 – 70,000 for round trip and last time I looked it was 145,000!) So in 2023, I just paid the $ cost which was about $1700 for Economy. (The 1st time I flew Delta to London in 1980 it cost $500 each and we thought that was a fortune!) I never fly enough to get MQMs and I don’t understand the system anyway, so it’s a moot point for me. My next flight on Delta is to Miami in March and I used points. I will continue to use Delta.
I am on of those who had to leave Delta. They are making it very difficult to stick around. The last straw for me has been realizing that earning MM status has become more difficult: No MQM boost with the CC, and not even the 50% extra MQM if you purchase a first class ticket—I recently flew first class from BOS to SFO and have been awarded 2704 MQM toward my MM status. I usually got the 50% bonus (4056 MQM), but not anymore. So, I got the same MQM that I would have gotten if I flew main cabin (spending one fifth of what I spent …) Plus, now it is complicated to check how many MQM (again, towards MM status) one get each time, as Delta removed the useful Account Activity Details. I have already started switching to United. Finger crossed.
I agree with Stefano.. It is hard to figure out what will happen to get MM status. I flew 5200 miles last week but only got 2300 towards my MM status..???