Delta Confirms Negative SkyMiles Program Changes Effective January 2015
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Earlier this morning, Delta sent out a press release announcing changes that will be made to the SkyMiles program starting January 1, 2015, that they claim will make earning and redeeming easier for SkyMiles members, and in my opinion, they’re all going to be bad news for most Delta flyers.
Changes to the SkyMiles program will be effective January 1, 2015.
Here are my thoughts and suggestions, then read on below to find out the details of these new changes:
Earning
The major changes here – at least the ones Delta has released details on so far – involve the mileage earning structure. Delta will be transitioning from a traditional distance-based earning program where the miles you earn is based on the miles you fly, to a revenue-based earning structure where you earn miles based on the cost of a ticket and the fare class you purchase. Here’s how it breaks down:
So General members will earn 5 miles per dollar.
Silver Medallion 7 miles per dollar
Gold Medallion: 8 miles per dollar
Platinum Medallion: 9 miles per dollar
Diamond Medallion: 11 miles per dollar
You can still earn 2 miles per dollar with a Delta co-branded Amex.
To put that in context, let’s say you were a General member and bought a roundtrip ticket from LAX-JFK for $350. Here’s the earning comparison:
This year, you’d earn 4,950 miles, but next year, you’ll earn just 1,750 miles – just about a third of the miles you’d be earning currently. Even top-tier Diamond Medallions fare no better:
At this rate as a general member, you’re basically earning miles at 20 cents each – a terrible value and much more than I’d value any mileage currency, let alone Delta SkyMiles.
When traveling on Delta’s partner airlines, you will still earn a percentage of miles flown based on the fare class of the ticket you purchased, though Delta recently hacked away at partner earning as well, and details on the new earning structure here have not been released yet either. Basically, if you’re flying short-haul/expensive flights you may earn a lot more miles than you would by simply flying the short distance. But …read more
Source: TPG
The post you're reading is from our RSS Feed. When we're out there traveling the world, it can be nearly impossible to bring you all of the news from the miles/points/travel industry. To bring you the best content possible, we've linked our personal RSS Feed to the blog so that when a newsworthy article comes out, we'll simply feed it in with the rest of our posts. This way you can be sure you're always getting the best and most current info out there.
