delta gold here, i need 10880 more MQM's for platinum could fly to Honolulu (on miles i still have or under a grand cash) and earn 10060, that would still leave me 800 short. anything further for more MQMs is running higher dollars, but i am considering rolling over MQM's and stay gold... first time i'm considering reaching for platinum. no clue what to do.
In my experience, platinum never got me any upgrades. Probably depends on your local market and what your chances are of getting upgrades with platinum. In Billings, platinum is a guaranteed upgrade, while in orange county, diamonds never get upgraded unless they are on a full fare F ticket.
Not familiar with the differences that Delta has between gold and platinum. I took a day trip to LA (from NJ lol) to tick gold status for next year, it was a cheap ass flight surprisingly and got to fly on one of their new 787-10's in premiere plus seats so all around worth a $280 ticket.
Start a go fund me account or have @Metalhead own a PBR stand and sell .50 shots of beer and y’all could split the proceeds. I just how chromedome doesn’t drink all of the profits.
Yeah, I booked it like a month in advance expecting that I was going to be running short. I'm already scheming on how to make status for next year now that United has changed their qualifier structure. Basically going to be trying to take connecting flights everywhere since individual flights (rather than miles flown) are what they are tracking.
Unless you fly out of some podunk airport on low volume routes you wont get many upgrades to F as PT vs GO. Delta has been doing what they call FCM First Class Monetization for the last year or 2. The CEO's goal is to sell 80%+ of F seats vs giving them away. Thats why you'll see some fairly cheap buy ups from J. What it can do is give you instant C+ when you buy an economy ticket for domestic. If your 2020 flight plan is still pretty heavy just rollover miles and hit PT earlier. Also in case you want to keep an eye out for deals go to flyertalk.com...its the beeb for FF. I am considering flying LAX to TPE on China Airlines for the hell of it earlier next year from a post on there showing RT prices at like $400. China is skyteam and you can get big MQM from partners and credit it to delta.
Im just over 100k on delta and have one last trip so no reasonable way to get diamond. I’ll roll the 25k over to next year and will get it next year. I had a 3 month window where I wasn’t traveling this year so between credit card MQMs and actual travel I’ll get it. I get upgraded quite a bit at platinum - just rarely going in or out of Atl/MSP.
This close to the end of the year, rollover is probably the best bet. I was running way short one year but did planning in early November. Ended up flying first class to Maui this week actually as it was the cheapest deal since in between the holidays. Got 150% of the miles flown, kept my status, and got a sweet vacation out of it. Platinum used to be automatic for upgrades but those days are long gone. I'd take the head start to next year with 15k miles in the bank.
Its MQD that they give you a smaller percentage of. For MQM they take your fare class and distance and do some math and its 100%, 150%, 200% based on carrier and fare class. So for a fare that classes out as a J (business class) but is cheap you can really make out on MQM. Guys report getting 8-10-15K MQM on a partner flight whereas on DL it would be like 50% to 75% of that.
gotta look into that for next year. my only worry is that AF and KLM are not really cheaper for the destinations i'm looking into. and since Flying Blue is still switching to my account with them despite me booking through delta, they snatch my miles... had that happen last year on a nice leg to GVA.
Sometimes you get those rare bumps from left field though. I'm flying back from Vegas tomorrow afternoon to EWR and connecting through IAH, a major United hub, just checked in online and got the bump on the second leg w/ Gold status. Was surprised to see that one.
I’m in the same spot. Going to Cali next week which will put me just over 100k for the year. I should be able to hit diamond next year if I travel the same amount. Flying to Seychelles on purchased tickets in March so that should help!
My experience has been the same as what's already been said. I was gold last year, platinum this year. I don't think I get upgraded that much more often. Pretty sure you have to be diamond to really count on it. Besides I don't know how much reason there is to upgrades. I flew with a friend last week who is a gold medallion. There were four open seats in first from people who didn't make the flight. He got upgraded, I didn't. I kind of wanted to whine about it but I'm not a baby.
I was Diamond several years in a row before they changed the credit card mileage waiver from $25k spend to $250k. Even Diamond did not get me to where I could count on the upgrades. Fare class seems to make a bigger difference than anything else.