Frequent Miler on the Air - Delta elite status: easier than ever | Ep109 | 7-31-21

Episode Date: July 31, 2021

  00:34 Giant Mailbag: Do you have any plans to to do a podcast about the US Bank Altitude Reserve card? https://frequentmiler.com/us-bank-altitude-reserve-guide/   2:45 What crazy thing....did Alaska Airlines do this week?   10:37 Mileage Running the Numbers: Is it worth mileage running Delta Lifetime Diamond status? https://frequentmiler.com/manufacturing-lifetime-delta-diamond-status/   19:26 Main Event: Delta elite status: easier than ever https://frequentmiler.com/easy-path-to-delta-elite-status-through-jan-2024/   https://frequentmiler.com/delta-extends-elite-status-upgrade-certificates-earnings-on-awards-and-more/   51:24 Question of the Week: If you book a Fine Hotel & Resorts property and then downgrade your Platinum card, will you still get benefits?   Join our email list: https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/   Thanks for listening!   Music credit: Annie Yoder

frequent miler on the air starts now today's main event delta elite status easier than ever am i going to become elite am i going to become a delta elite member it's time nick doesn't have any excuses anymore he's he's been sitting on the sidelines all this time, but now Delta is becoming easy to earn. Delta elite status. We'll see. I don't know. We'll see. It's easy enough. We'll see.

Maybe. We'll see. All right. But first. First is the giant mailbag. The giant mail comes from David via email. David says, I was glad to discover your podcast on YouTube yesterday. Great job, informative, and a lot of fun to listen to. Do you have any plans to talk about US Bank

Altitude Reserve Card? I'd love to hear a podcast on that topic. So good news, David. All right. Not really good news. We don't have any plans to talk about it. But we're going to talk about that right now. So at least you get that much, right, David? You're on the featured on this. Just found the show featured on the show already, David. See how easy it is. Right. I've written a lot about the altitude reserve on the blog. So, you know, check out our posts on that. I'm sure we'll talk about it at some point if it sort of becomes newsworthy, but as things stand, it's been sort of the same old thing for a while now. And so it just hasn't been a main topic, but it's a very interesting card. And especially for those who have a lot

of mobile wallet payments like Apple Pay or Samsung Pay, Google Pay, because it earns three points per dollar for those charges, which is very unusual. Well, and it's excellent because those points can be used for one and a half cents value each. So you're looking at basically sort of the equivalent of four and a half percent back everywhere that you can use your phone to pay, which is just about everywhere these days.

So, I mean, it is a great card. There's no doubt about it. Just nothing has changed. You know, it's been a great card since the beginning and nothing has really changed with nothing worth talking about there lately you know it's not not new that that's the best card to have if you spend a lot of money and you can use either your phone or samsung watch or whatever in order to pay right right okay moving on what do we have next after the mailbag? Mattress. Well, not mattress, but mileage running. No, before we do that, though, don't we normally do? My goodness, we're recording it late if you can't tell. So, so then

what crazy thing did Alaska Airlines do this week, right? Yeah. So Alaska is, is now offering the ability to use their miles to book Cutter Airlines flights. And so that's, that alone is good. You know, and I say it that way because the award pricing isn't great. I will, I will though point out one thing that is great about that whole thing, which is when Alaska joined One World, we were worried that they would move to one award chart and get rid of like their the the spectacular awards that they have with just certain select partners and but with with cutter coming out this way and some other information that came out it's looking more and more like what's going to happen instead is they're going to have these individual award charts for uh cutter and others um and some will be good and some will be bad and so at least they might

not actually kill the the good ones that aside what was that aside what was the crazy thing was was that the award prices are not really fixed yeah that's a very nice way of saying variable they are variable not really fixed that's like a marketing guy's way of saying variable. They are variable. Not really fixed. That's like a marketing guy's way of saying that they can be anything under the sun, kind of. Not really anything, I guess. But it seems that, for example, the low level from the U.S. to the Middle East is about 85,000. We think 85,000 miles one way is the lowest we've seen for that however sometimes it's as much as like 170 000 miles one way and well they they did they did later in the day come

out with a uh award chart with ranges so there's a low which is uh the low of the range which is yeah something like 85k and then the highest i don't know 180 000 or something along along those lines the the uh the way it works is that when awards are available to cutters like other partners uh in other words their saver award availability then alaska price is at that low level and if there's not they somehow can book it anyway, but for a lot more miles. And I mean, so there's a plus side there. There's a plus side because that means that you can book an award when other programs can't. And so that that is unusual and notable. And, you know, if you've got lots and lots and lots of miles and you just want to be able to book a seat,

I'm sure that there are some people that would be happy to say, oh, great, I can use my miles on it. But of course, I don't like the way that looks because, I mean, how long will it be before more and more flights become variable? And of course, if that happens with this chart, what's to say that's not going to happen with the other sweet spots? And so that to me is kind of a bummer, right? I mean, no no you disagree i mean to me so so they've they've had the same approach with um aerolingus now for about two years and i you know i haven't seen them uh do anything i mean the only reason to be worried last time you searched for an aerolingus flight using alaska miles right come like, like get real here.

My assumption is that, and I, I believe this to be true, but that if there's save reward availability, they're going to price it at that low level. And as long as that holds true, then this doesn't bother me at all. It's just kind of bizarre. It is kind of bizarre. It money is the waters. It, it, it blurs. It blurs the lines. To me, it just indicates an inch toward a more variable pricing model. And I don't like inching in that direction. So you're right. I mean, on the surface, you're right. If it's available to American or available to whoever else, then theoretically, it will be available at that same low level you know i say low level cutter prices weren't really low exactly but but they're whatever their saver-ish level is and you know should be available at that price with alaska so i mean yeah it could be totally benign and just a nice add-on that they can book more seats but i just don't like the idea of kind of acclimating people to the idea that the price could be whatever it might be that day. I just don't like that model. I'm just kind of fascinated by the whole thing.

Like what's happening behind the scenes? Do they have some specific deal with Cutter? Like we'll pay you this many miles in these circumstances, or are they just basically buying you a seat on Cutter for whatever it costs, and you're paying so many miles that it's worth it to them to exchange miles for that? I don't know. That's a great question. I'd love to find out. I'm curious what this will mean for the other partners as they add them, and whether we'll see that with another partner or not. Like you said, I mean, I guess it's been

the case with Aer Lingus for quite a while. So maybe this is something they're negotiating with new partnerships. And so maybe we'll see that. I will say it does seem like a positive thing that they, they seemingly intend to keep separate award charts with each partner, because that hopefully means that those sweet spots will remain. Of course, it also means that they could, you know, change one of those overnight like i don't know they did a few years ago with emirates and and kill one of those really quickly so you know six and one half dozen the other but but crazy nonetheless because we don't usually see that right i mean that's not a feature we normally yeah it does worry me the the pricing that they chose to go with on this worries me

that american is going to copy. And because that, that is one of their American sweet spots is the, you know, 75 K business class all the way to anywhere in Africa, including South Africa. And if they go up to, I can't remember what, what Alaska is charging,

but you know, we don't want to see us lose that. But it seems likely that they will change that. Just one other thing to mention is Avianca Life Miles is sort of doing something similar as well. They're more obvious about what's going on though so with Avianca now if you do an award search in some cases there will be a button that shows up showing like see more options or something along those lines which basically means we didn't find any awards available but if you click here we'll take you to another website where you could buy the ticket you want with miles instead of cash or with a

combination of miles and cash. I very much doubt it's a good value. I, you know, I wouldn't be clicking that button except to see how bad of a value it is. But it's kind of interesting that, you know, I think it seems like more airlines are trying to do that kind of thing. I mean, it makes some sense. Airlines have obviously been hurting. So if they are able to pull in some additional revenue, making miles more usable, then I

mean, it kind of makes sense that they would take advantage of that. Right, right. And it might help them with sort of customer satisfaction for those customers who don't really care how much they spend. They just want to get their ticket and use miles to make it a free trip. Right. And I'm sure that there are plenty of those customers. So, you know, I guess it fits. If I ran the program, I guess maybe I would be interested in doing that. But as a maximizer, I'm like, right, right. Make it, you know, right. Luckily with life miles, like I said, it's kind of easy to see that that's happening. So yeah, you don't have to worry about it. There you go. All right. So then mattress, no mileage. No, I don't know what I'm talking about today, but no, it is mileage running the numbers today. Mileage running with Delta. Now you wrote this week

about manufacturing lifetime Delta status. So I got to figure out whether this is worth a couple of mileage runs. So run me back down it. What do I have to do in order to mileage run Delta lifetime diamond status? Diamond status. That's the key. Diamond. So it used to not be possible to get lifetime diamond status.

And what Delta calls their lifetime status, it's called million miler status. Because at one million miles, you get basically lifetime silver status. At two million, lifetime gold. And then they start skipping things around. And anyway, you have to get six million to get diamond status. Now, diamond status is is fantastic status to have uh so you've said right i mean you're very happy with your delta diamond status so surely you think it's worth doing this so said just six million that's all we need six million miles

only six million mqms which which is their uh qualifying miles or medallion qualifying miles so so we're not talking miles like like the miles you are in dollar per you know mile per dollar spend kind of a thing it's not that's not the kind of miles that you can redeem for awards it's it's it's it's normally thought of or talked about as like butt in seat miles so the actual how many miles did you fly on Delta? But that's not really right. That can't be it because I know you don't fly Delta that much and you still got Delta Diamond, right? Right.

That's not really it because you can earn these things, MQMs, from credit card spend. You spend a lot on the credit cards. You don't get one MQM per dollar spent. You get half, basically, if you meet these big spend thresholds. So for $30,000 spend, you get 15,000 MQMs with the Delta Reserve card, for example. And so it was fun for me to look at that and say, okay, so how much of that spend would we have to do to get to Delta Diamond status for life so that we would just get that status and get to enjoy it for the rest of our lives? That's great. So there's some limitations, though, to how many MQMs you can earn from credit card spend. And basically, I'm not going to bore you with all the details.

Basically, you can get about 160,000 MQMs if you're just doing this by yourself. And you have a lot of spend you can do. You could get about 160,000 each year. 160, that seems like a very small portion of 6 million. It does. But let's assume that each year you're also going to get 40,000 from actual flying. Okay. So we're going to round up to 200,000. And that's convenient because every five years you get a million miles, a million MQMs that is. And so five times six, 30 years to get to lifetime diamond status.

30 for lifetime diamond. I do 30 years of that. There's not much lifetime left for the lifetime diamond, Greg. That's the problem. You've got to start your kids now. Right, right, right. Sign them up for those cards and get going. Luckily, there is an alternative and so if you have a lot of friends who really really trust you

and you tell them hey friend one want you to sign up for a delta reserve card and assign me or you whoever's doing this this craziness, as an authorized user. So, add me as an authorized user. And then I'm going to spend $120,000 on your card this year. Oh, is that all? You're just going to spend $120,000 on my card, huh? And yeah, I'm going to pay the bill. So, don't worry. I'm good for it. I'm going to pay the bill. I'm going to spend $120,000. Pay your bill. I'm going to spend 120,000, pay your bill. You're going to keep all the sky miles that are earned. So you can book awards.

So, right. All right. I like the way this is sounding. But you're going to gift me those MQMs that I earned. All right. So you're going to gift me the 60,000 MQMs that I earned from that spend. Okay. All right.

Now I'm going to make this. And so what you're getting out of it, you're getting, you know, Sky Club access, the things that the Delta Reserve card comes with, the perks that comes with like Sky Club access, even Centurion lounge access, and you're getting all these miles to use, to fly wherever you want. I'm getting my MQMs. I'm doing all the work. Good deal. Now I make this deal with 99 more friends. So a hundred friends total. Must be a popular guy, Greg. Right. And then I spent 120,000 on each of those cards. So 12 million dollars. 12 million. That's a lot of cheddar there. I don't know if you're good for all that, Craig. 120, I'm sure you're good for. 12 million, I don't know about.

At the end of that spend, I've got diamond status for life. So how about that? Is that it? That's it. Done. Game set. So what do you think? Is that a mileage run worthy? Clearly, you're out of your mind. You're out of your mind, Greg, which is typically what I say about the $250,000 a year that you got to spend in order just to have Delta Diamond status each year. But wow, that's tough. So yeah, absolutely maddeningly crazy. It is. It was fun coming up with these ideas. It is fun. But I have a question, a related question for you that I don't know if you're

going to be able to answer, but I'm going to put you on the spot here. So I think you're what? You're a 2 million miler, right? No, it's about 1.5. 1.5. Okay. 1.5. So out of the 1.5 million that you've done, do you have any idea as to how many of those are actual button seat miles? I don't, but I, but I do believe it's a very, very small percentage. I'm just curious. How am I? I would guess about 10%, 10%. So maybe, yeah, maybe, maybe, I mean, so part of the issue is 150,000 miles. I mean, do you get enough benefit out of Delta Diamond status if you're only flying 10% of that to keep manufacturing? All right. So so that's that's what I was going to get to, which is it used to be that the term button seat miles was was misleading because used to be when you flew on award flights, you didn't earn any MQMs. And so I'm not counting award flights when I say 10%. I'm just counting where I actually earned MQMs.

I spent a lot of time because I manufacture spend in order to earn Delta diamond status. I have a lot of Delta miles. And so I book a lot of Delta awards and it's not until this year that those awards actually turn into MQMs from when, when we fly. And so they're doing that this year, they've announced they're going to do that again next year. We don't know if it's a permanent new feature, but that's an awesome feature. It is, it is. And we're going to talk more about it in a minute here. So I'm excited about that. I think that is a very positive thing. So all right. So about 10% of your one and a half million or whatever is like paid by the NCAA miles, but probably there's a large number of miles you've actually flown on Delta when you include

all of the award tickets. So you've gotten enough benefit out of it. Okay. All right. All right. Good enough. And then I'm going to convince myself, hopefully, that that this whole Delta diamond thing is worthwhile when we take our global upgrade certificate trip. So hopefully that's going to sell me on the idea that I need to have Delta diamond status next year. Well, we'll see, because our whole conversation today, the main event is about Delta elite status being easier, but not diamond status particularly. I mean, it's just as hard. It's almost just as hard as ever because it still has that requirement of either having $15,000 of Delta spend.

I mean, it's a little bit easier than that this year, but still, or $250,000 of Delta credit card spend in a calendar year. So that's a huge hurdle. Platinum status, which is really good, does not require those things. So that's the goal we're going to be at. Okay. So then let's do it.

I mean, let's move right into the main event then, right? Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. All right. So easier than ever, huh? Go ahead. So welcome to the main event. right let's do it let's do it let's do it all right okay easier than ever huh go ahead you so welcome to the main event that's right so delta elite status easier than ever we delta made an announcement earlier this week that they were going to do um two things uh well

actually there's a whole lot of things but but a whole lot of things, such as rolling over status, rolling over, but there's a bunch of great things they're doing. But there's two things that we're going to talk about why it's made Delta Elite status easier to achieve. One, the biggest thing I think is they announced that all those MQMs that we were talking about before are going to roll over into next year. That means anything you do this year to earn MQMs, those are going to roll over to next year. So in essence, you have two years now to earn all the MQMs you need for elite status rather than just one year,

which is what you normally have. Now, of course, if you rolled some over from the previous year, then you'd have three years basically. Are those rolling over too? Because people asked that question and I just wasn't sure. So whatever you earned last year rolled over to this year. So are last year's rolling over to next year too. I believe so. But yeah, I don't have any good way of knowing that for sure. But I'm pretty sure they do. I know that, you know, in the past, Delta allows rolling over miles as a regular thing

under certain circumstances, rolling over MQMs. And there's never been any restriction on like, oh, well, those were rolled over last year, so we're not going to roll those over again. So I don't think they would do it any differently here. Pretty good. All right. So rolling over, rolling, rolling, rolling, lots of rolling. So that's one of the two things that's happening. Right. The other thing is, which I mentioned before, they're extending the ability to earn elite earnings on award tickets. And that's great. So you'll be able to spend your Delta miles and actually earn towards elite status for the same flights.

So those two things are really big. Now, the other things that make it easy already happened before, but they're worth reiterating. So one thing is that right now, and it's happened several times in sort of the last two years, the Delta Reserve credit card has been offering not just a lot of miles when you sign up, but also 20,000 MQMs as a signup bonus. So that's a fixed thing. That's good until August 25th right now. That's not to say it won't come back shortly after that. We don't know. Delta has enhanced status boosts all of this year. What status boosts are,

I mentioned before, spend $30,000 on the Delta Reserve Card, you get 15,000 MQMs. This year, you get 25% more MQMs from that spend. So 25% on top of the 15,000 MQMs. So you get a little bit more MQMs because of that. Status accelerators. So this year, starting, I think it was in June, all Delta flights get 50% to 75% more elite earnings. So again, any flights you take this year from June onward are getting 50% to 75% more MQMs, more medallion qualifying dollars, and more um, and more segments, but we're not going to talk about qualifying on segments. So don't worry about that. And, um, all you have to do is, is book comfort plus or higher level of service in order to get that 75% bump. So, so basically

you're not quite doubling your lead earnings, but you're getting a huge boost in them from actual flying. And, you know, as I mentioned before, and award tickets are working this year. And have those and also get those status accelerators. Now, award tickets will give you MQMs. Do you also get MQDs on the award tickets? You do. You do. You do. And it's so MQDs, we haven't really talked about what those are too much here. And what Delta does is they say,

in order to earn an elite level, you not only have to have, you know, this many MQMs or button seat miles. But you also have to have this much spend on Delta flights. And the idea is that they're trying to stop people. People used to book a lot of really cheap, really long distance flights. And so they would get like top tier elite status, yet be Delta's worst customers as far as how much revenue Delta would actually get from them. So by adding this MQD dollar requirement, they're rewarding only those who actually spend a lot with Delta. So, yeah, so the way they do award tickets, the way they award MQDs with award tickets is they treat each mile spent as if it's a penny. So every hundred miles is like a dollar, is an MQD. But you also get the 50% or 75% on top of that.

So fewer miles, flown miles, so to speak, and fewer dollars spent this year in order to get status. Right, Right. So, and because all of that's easier this year, yeah, because you're going to earn more MQMs and because those are rolling over, it makes it much easier for next year. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, and when we say for next year, you mean next year earning status that really you'll get for the full year after next year, right? So you're going to work this year. Normally you work this year to have status next year, but this time around it's a little bit different because everything you do this year is going to add on top of whatever you do next year in order to qualify and have status

the entire following year, 2023. And what I find interesting about that is that I'm still not back to traveling like in full swing right now. I don't envision I will be quite back into full swing early 2022. I certainly hope that by mid 2022, I am. And by 2023, I expect, I mean, I hope everything will be back to normal, so to speak. And so to have these two years to build up elite status for the year when I finally anticipate I will hopefully be totally back to normal in terms of travel, that's particularly appealing. That makes it more interesting to me.

Yeah, yeah. And the 20,000 MQMs from signing up for Delta Reserve is huge. I mean, you are only 5,000 MQMs at that point away from silver status if you can meet the MQD requirement. Or with $25,000 spend on a Delta Reserve card, you get the MQD waiver, which lets you basically ignore the MQD requirement all the way up to platinum elite status. So, um, so that's huge. And so if you think about it, even without flying, like, let's say, let's say you're like, well, I want to get the card, uh, because I want to get the 20,000 MQMs while they're available. Um, but I'm not going to fly this year at all. Just, you know, just take the sort of worst case. So now you've got 20,000 MQMs to start next year. Then if you spend, even if you take the whole year to spend $30,000 on your Delta Reserve card next year, you'll get not only the MQD waiver, but you'll get 15,000 more MQMs,

and you'll have more than enough for silver status. In fact, 10,000 MQMs will roll over to the following year if that's all you did. Of course, if that's all you did, that's kind of silly because the whole point of getting elite status is get benefits while you're flying. But I'm just trying to show that like you could basically you know get silver status in your sleep across from now until the end of next year if you're just willing to put some spend on uh the delta reserve card and sign up for the new one now okay so that i that's fairly interesting too because the delta reserve card card, you get the 20,000 MQMs right now. So what happens though? So the silver status requires what? 25,000 MQMs?

That's right. And gold requires 50,000 and then platinum is 75, right? That's right. So let's say you get the Delta card, you get your 20,000 MQqms and then let's say you also do 30 000 spend on that card this year right this year yeah if you do that this year you're going to end up getting what 18 000 or 18 750 um yep mqms because you're gonna have more than the typical 15 you're gonna get the boost on that too so so you'd end up with $38,750, more than enough for silver, not enough for gold. Are all of those, even though you've already earned silver, are all

of those going to roll over into next year? That's right. That's what's different from usual. So in a normal year, if you did that, only the number that's over $25,000 would roll over to next year, but this year all almost 39,000 will roll over. And so you are, you know, uh, about 11,000 MCMs away from gold starting next year. And then another 30,000, cause you can spend what 30,000 again next year on that card and get yourself another 15,000 and you'd be over the hump for gold and well on your way to platinum. And all you've done so far is spend on the Delta Reserve card a couple of times. Right. And so that's not counting, right, exactly. And that's not counting your actual flying where you're earning, again,

if you do any flying this year, I think you're earning an accelerated rate. And so it's, you know, it's pretty unprecedented. And I can't, we've seen hotel chains do some amazing things this past seeing Delta make it very, very easy for those willing to invest a bit in getting status to get there. So I think that's pretty exciting for people who want to try it out. Yeah, it definitely is. And when you look at the reserve card, for instance, once you've met the spending requirement, you're also going to get a bunch of redeemable miles. And if you continue spending, you're going to get a bunch of redeemable miles. And in the past, the kind of frustrating thing about redeemable miles is that when you use those, you wouldn't be earning anything towards Delta status. But now those miles represent more MQMs and more MQDs, right? Because those are going to be able to be used in order to earn more towards status. So if you're flying Delta anyway,

because it doesn't count if you fly, like if you use your Delta miles to fly on Air France, do you get MQMs from that? No, I don't think so. I don't think so. So you got to be using them to fly on Delta. But still, I mean, if you look at what the reserve bonus is, what, 80,000?

So it's 80,000 or 85,000. So I think what it is, is the business card, business Delta reserve will give you 80,000 miles and the 20,000 MQMs. The personal one will give you, sorry, I said it the wrong way. The business one is 85,000 miles. The personal one is 80,000 miles plus $200 statement credit if you spend anything on Delta. And both give you the 20,000 MQMs. And of course, you can get both. So if you have two available Amex credit card slots and you've never had these Delta Reserve cards, even if you've had the Delta Platinum or the Delta Gold card before, you still can qualify for the Delta Reserve and the welcome bonuses. So if you're really into this, you could get 40,000 MQMs just from the welcome bonuses, 165,000 redeemable miles, which can be spent.

And as you said, earn MQMs from all of that. Yeah, I mean, and you MQMs from all that. Yeah. And you could get reasonably far with that. So you could rack up a fair amount of miles flying using those. So that's interesting because that makes it even easier to get to platinum status. So Delta Platinum seems pretty doable. I was pretty excited when I saw that they were extending award flights counting towards status through next year too. Because I mean, people who listen a lot know that I don't fly Delta very often. I've flown them more in the last couple of years since I've worked for Frequent Miler, really. I've flown them a few times, but before that, I hadn't flown them since like 1986. So I you know, I just I just didn't typically find them to fit with my needs and things. But now, now I'm looking at Delta flights, like I'm looking for reasons to fly on Delta, because I'm like, well, you know, if they have an award that's reasonably priced, even if it's not quite the cheapest, it might be the best option, because now I can use my miles to earn elite

status. And again, what interests me more about that now than other times in the recent past is that it's looking like I would be able to earn that status for a time when I'll really be able to leverage it, not only in the sense that I'll obviously be hopefully back to travel, but I mean, all of us have been missing travel, right? So I feel like by 2023, I'm going to be ready to go on a tear and really get out there and do a bunch of traveling. And so hopefully I'll be able to utilize benefits.

But is it worth it? I mean, is Delta Platinum worth putting this effort into? I mean, do I really want the reserve card and a bunch of Delta Sky Pesos for, you know, platinum? I mean, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I mean, it's a great question. What, what you get is, you know, higher chance of getting free upgrades, higher chance than gold or silvers, right? And, and getting upgraded to Comfort plus on a domestic flight is, is automatic. Basically, as long as there's a seat available, you will get upgraded shortly after booking,

like, you know, within an hour or something of booking it, you're put into a comfort plus. So, so that's nice. Um, does that happen as a platinum member? Is that just happened to you? It does. You're done. Yes. Okay.

No, no, it does. And I mean, silvers and gold also get free upgrades to Comfort Plus, but they don't get it till it's almost time for the flight. So golds get it, I think, maybe three days before, something along those lines, and silvers the day before. And your upgrade window to first class is also in advance, uh, of, uh, golds and silvers. So you're not competing with them, uh, for those upgrades as much.

And, um, uh, the, the, the biggest thing though about platinum status, that's really cool is you get a choice benefit that you get select each year. And the choice benefit that you would want to select are the four regional upgrade certificates. We've talked before, I think, about how the regional upgrade certificates, I used to think they were limited to just the contiguous US, but it actually goes beyond even the U.S. It's like sort of all non-long haul flights, I guess.

You know, so anyways, you could go to like Central America, you could go to some islands and so on. And when you book a flight, and the new part is whether it's booked with miles or with cash, you can apply a regional upgrade certificate. And if there's upgrade availability, you can get upgraded at the time of booking. If there's not, you get on a wait list so that if upgrade availability appears in the meantime, you get upgraded. And then if you don't get upgraded beforehand, the other cool thing is you will get upgraded at the gate before any diamond elites do if they didn't use a global, sorry, a regional upgrade certificate for that flight. So they don't, you know, most diamonds don't have more regional upgrade certificates than you do, because most diamonds, I believe, this is certainly what I do, pick the four regional

upgrades when they hit platinum each year, and then pick four regional upgrades when they hit platinum each year and then pick four global upgrades when they get to diamond status. They could instead pick a regional, but I'm just guessing most people don't do that. Probably not. So there's a decent shot of getting gate upgrades in those cases then. And even some of the flights to Hawaii count for regional upgrade certificates, right? So you can even use those in some cases on flatbed seats to Hawaii, I think, right? Yeah, yeah. Actually, I think it's all of them now.

I think they changed it. So it used to be limited to certain flights, but I'm pretty sure that all of the flights are at least eligible. Those are a really hard get though, you know, I'm not gonna lie to you. Sure they are. Yeah, I can dream. But, you know, and sure not gonna lie to you sure they are yeah i can dream but uh you know and i i mentioned the flights to hawaii they're less exciting to me since turkish has that sweet spot with united where if you could actually find the flatbed seat availability which is equally almost impossible on the flights to hawaii but but if you could then it's 12 500 turkish miles one way so it. So if you're going to hope for the best, you know, then you have another option beyond the Delta regional. You do, you do.

But if what you want is right, if what you want is lie flat and you fly between New York and LA, you know, they have those nice lie flat seats and you can book a coach ticket and upgrade to that lie flat experience. That's pretty terrific. Yeah, that's pretty terrific on those flagship routes. So all right. So that that sounds pretty appealing. So now what would I need to do? So in order to get platinum status, I could get the reserve card, but let's say I don't even want to get a credit card. So how many miles? So this year you're saying the status boost is 75% if you book comfort plus or above. So if I book comfort plus or above, how many miles does that mean that I need to actually fly in order to earn enough for platinum status? So 75,000, about 1.75, right? So

what? 42,000, almost 43,000 miles. So I'd either have to fly like 43,000 miles this year or some percentage of that this year. And next year, the status boost is not at this point anyway, going to be on. So next year it would be, you know, one to one, so to speak. So, and that's if you book comfort plus or business class, do you get more MQMs for booking a typically for booking a higher cabin? Um, yeah, there's a, there's a class of service bonus. Um, so don't make me figure it out. I don't remember the details. There's a lot of math to be done in order to figure out how many miles, but you don't need that many. So the service bonus doesn't kick in with comfort plus, but it does kick in with like business class. So you need like almost 43,000 miles

of comfort plus tickets this year, whether that's paid or using your miles and potentially even fewer if you're booking business class tickets because you'll get the class of service plus too. Right, right. Now, if you don't have a credit card, you're going to have to worry about MQDs.

And so again, this is something I don't have memorized, like how many dollars you need to have spent to get to silver, gold, or platinum. I do know diamond is $15,000 in a calendar year. The class of service bonuses do apply. So this year, it's, you know, more like $10,000 or less if you do Comfort Plus or higher the whole way. But next year is what you'd be talking about. So I really think that this is, it's not a gimme if you don't at least get a Delta credit card so you can get the waiver, the MQD waiver. I think that's a necessary part of this.

That can be done for those who have the Delta Platinum card, which is a cheaper card than the reserve. You can get the waiver with that. You could also get MQMs from high spend. You don't get as many MQMs as you do with the reserve card, but that's another option for those who don't want to invest in the $550 Delta Reserve card. Well, so now here's another question. So I know we just kind of asked, is it worth it? And we it and we said okay platinum status has got some nice benefits to it but now how about we're talking about it from a perspective of people who do some manufactured spending and so you know we're talking about numbers like all you got to do is put 25 000 spend on your delta card no big deal i mean come on just like almost like you're just kind of going to a machine and swiping

it and that's all there is to it but But that's not necessarily the case for everybody, for a lot of people. I think a lot of listeners that would be listening to this would say, wait, with 25,000 spend, I could be earning four or five new credit card bonuses. Is it worth sacrificing four or five credit card bonuses, or three even, let's say, in order to get Delta Platinum status? Is it worth enough to dedicate the spend on a reserve card if that's going to mean that you can't meet minimum spending requirements for other bonuses? Right. I mean, probably not, if you put it that way, because I mean, think about it. All of the miles you could be earning or points in miles, even cash back you could be earning from additional signup bonuses could be used to just book all your first class flights that you want to take. And if you're booked in a first class from the get go, you're not worried about upgrades or any of the other perks that elite status gives you.

So, yeah, I mean, if you're going to put it that way, then no, I mean, if that's your choice is either do sign up bonuses or pursue this type of thing, it's not worth it. If you even look at the opportunity cost of doing this versus putting the same spend on even a 2% cashback card, it's, it's not a cheap way to go because you're giving up quite a bit of cash back. So, you know, yeah, it's,

it's sort of easy to do. It's, it's like theoretically easy to do, but it's not cheap. I'm not, I'm not going to pretend it's cheap.'s cheap. It's definitely not. You've got the $550 Delta Reserve card we're talking about. You've got a lot of spend, which is expensive, either really expensive if it means giving up other signup bonuses or moderately expensive giving up whatever your next best card is for earning rewards that you're not putting spend on because you're putting it on this card. Yeah, I mean, and that's a big trade off. And so my issue with elite status, or my, I don't know if I should say issue, the hang up for me that has made elite status not particularly interesting, and airline elite status, I should say, not particularly interesting to me is because most of my travel is award tickets and usually in business class or higher. So I don't do very much

economy class domestic travel. Or when I do, it's usually on Southwest, but that's neither here nor there. Even if I booked all of that domestic economy class travel on Delta, it wouldn't be that much. I don't do that much of it. So that's the hang up for me too. And so for those of you out there listening who are like, I don't really fly that many domestic flights. Well, it might not be worth it. And so that's part of my dilemma with it where I'm like, well, am I going to fly enough domestically that those little upgrades are going to be worthwhile? I'm usually flying with my family. Are they all going to get upgraded too?

What are the chances we're going to find enough upgrade space, even if we're eligible for it, blah, blah, blah. So, I mean, those are some concerns too. And so for me, I'm excited by the idea. But to be honest, I don't necessarily know that I'll go after it because I don't know that I'll see enough benefit. I don't want to book an international flight and economy class and like chance it and hope that I'll get upgraded. So, you know, those regional upgrade certificates are interesting to me because you could potentially confirm it far in advance, but you know, I'm not going to book and hope that I get a complimentary upgrade on an international flight and I'm not going to... Well, you're not eligible for upgrades

on international flights anyway without an upgrade instrument. So there you go. There you go. There you have it. At least long distance internationally, you could get them to fly to Central America and very Northern tip of South America.

And the same thing with the regional upgrade certificates in terms of waiting to get it at the gate. That's not the way that I typically will travel. I'm not going to fly by the seat of my pants and hope that I get an upgrade at the gate that it finally clears or something. So that's not so exciting to me either. Being able to use them in advance is nice,

but if I can't, then it's totally useful. I think this makes the most sense for those like me who were, who live at a Delta near a Delta hub. And so they're sort of naturally going to be flying Delta most of the time or preferring to fly Delta because Delta has, you know, the most non-stops. And so if it means on all their travel, they're likely to have a better experience, like the very least, you can immediately book, you know, sit in, even with silver status,

you can immediately just pick one of the preferred economy seats to sit in. And that includes things like the exit aisle and so on. So you can get, you know, better seating right away and, and free check bags and things like that. So you'll have a better experience when you're flying Delta anyway. Yeah. If you're, you know, in your situation, you're not anywhere near a Delta hub. Um, you you're probably, you, you sort of have to go out of your way to fly Delta much. It makes more sense for those who would be flying Delta a fair amount anyway.

So… And if that's you, then this is an unprecedented opportunity. You know, we don't… Exactly. We don't… We haven't seen anybody else offer anything remotely like this. You know, we were talking actually before we started recording about American Airlines and what they've done this year in order to make it easier to requalify. So if you already had status,

they made it a lot easier in the sense that you only have to spend $15,000 on an American Airlines credit card in order to keep your status. So even if you got executive platinum status, I guess, right? 15,000 spend. So far less than the amount of spend that we're talking about, far enough anyway, less than the amount of spend we're talking about doing on a Delta reserve card to maintain your executive platinum status. And I think American Airlines fans are pretty pumped and enthused about that as being a super generous, easy way to keep your status. And meanwhile here, Delta is saying, you know what? Forget about that. You just, you keep your status, whatever your status was, you got it. It's free. You don't

have to do any spend. You don't have to do anything else. No hoops to jump through. Keep your status for next year. There you go. That's right. That's right. We're gonna make it super easy to get that status back again, or to get a higher level of status. Nobody has, has cut the status requirements in the same kind of way. And, course, they're dressing it up as like a 75% bonus on your comfort plus or whatever. But really what that is, is a reduction in requirements. It's making it easier to qualify for elite status and nobody else is making it that easy. Right, right, right. So, you know, that's pretty exciting from such a major airline to make it so easy.

You know, I think I started this conversation with saying, if you've been wanting to try out elite status with Delta, you know, this is the time. For sure. ever will again, short of things like a status match challenge, which is a different thing, which you could look into. Google that if you have a lot of Delta flying coming up. And elite status with another airline, both. Then yeah, then that could be a good shortcut method. But otherwise, for somebody starting from scratch, this is as easy as it gets. And so if you want a taste of what elite status is like, and you're willing to go ahead and invest the spend and whatever else, you're not going to get an easier taste of elite status apart from like when Hyatt gave away American Airlines status to Globalist. I mean, that was, again, one of those unprecedented things. And there's not, that's the only thing I can think of that's ever been easier than this. Right. Well, and, and also if you've, even if you've been like silver or gold status and you're

like, I really want to try out being platinum, you know, again, I think this is the time to, to go for that and, and try it out. There you go. There you go. So get it, get out there and get your Delta elite status, get it while the getting's good. Cause it's probably not going to be this easy again. We don't think it would be surprising if it were, we can only, we're infamous for, for saying things like that. Next week there's going to be, you know,

United's going to be handing out their top tier lead status to anyone who, you know. Who knows? 10 bucks. Who knows? Who knows? I would love to see United do something here with my, I don't know, what is it?

Silver status you get from Marriott, titanium, something anyway. I'd love to get a little, I mean, I guess I'll probably requalify anyway with Marriott titanium this year, something anyway. I'd love to get a little. I mean, I guess I'll probably requalify anyway with Marriott, Titanium this year. But we'll see. That's another conversation for another day. Yeah. Maybe United will give us a lifetime top tier because we have silver right now.

Why not? Why not? I don't know. Why not? Delta's making it easy, United. Step up to the plate. Come on, United. All right.

So then that brings us to the post roast it does it's time for that even though i'm terribly unprepared for it oh swing and a miss no roasting huh i i don't have anything all right what do you have i don't have anything either so let's move on to the question of the week. So this week's question of the week, this is one that we've gotten a bunch of times actually. And then it just popped into my inbox right before we started recording again.

And I was like, you know what? This is a great one to ask because I don't think we know the answer yet, but I'd love to know what your opinion is because I think a lot of other people would like to know your opinion also. So Katie types in and says, thanks for your recent podcast with all of the information on the fine hotels and resorts and the hotel collection benefits and new credits on the Amex Platinum Card. We talked all about that over the last couple of weeks. She said, I have a

follow-up question. I'm planning to downgrade my husband's platinum card in August prior to paying the annual fee, but wanted to make a prepaid booking in December to use the credit before the downgrade. Do you know if anything will happen to the perks upon check-in if he no longer has that card? I think he'll have an Amex card with the same number since downgrading and not canceling. Keep the same number, maybe blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but not the platinum card at check-in. What do you think? If you downgrade your platinum card, if you've made a prepaid booking, then you downgrade it or cancel it. What happens?

Right. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that you'll keep the benefits of the booking, you know, because you already paid for a certain experience. And so that's what you should be getting. theoretically possible that there's some connection to the account that, that gets inquired upon when you go to check in. It seems unlikely. It seems unlikely to me too. Theoretically possible. And so I can understand why she'd wonder about that. But I, you know, if it was me, I'd feel pretty safe in, in doing that. And there would just be that little nagging thing that's like, oh, I shouldn't have promised my wife we were going to get free breakfast.

Yeah. I mean, worst case scenario, your stay was prepaid. So you get your room covered. So you got a free night anyway, you slice it. So the question really becomes, are you still going to get breakfast for two and the $100 credit and a late checkout? Or I say $100 credit does vary somewhat from property to property. But I think so. I think as far as these things go, I think once the booking is locked in, that's it. They see where the booking came from. They don't, I don't think the property has any access to know whether or not you have

a platinum card. And I would venture so far as to say that the average front desk employee, I don't know, maybe these high end places they know, but I would think that the average person doesn't probably know. They just know it pops up on their screen as, okay, benefit package A. And I know that that's this envelope that I got to give the person kind of a thing. I doubt that they know whether or not you have a platinum card. I really doubt that the hotel system at some of these small boutique independent properties is somehow querying Amex to see if you still got a Platinum card. It's so unlikely.

I do know that a couple of times when I've used fine hotels and resorts, the agent at check-in did know it was an Amex thing's i have it was sort of labeled as an amex thing and in fact at one point for a post paid like uh one which i've only done in the past the the pay at the hotel ones um i was even like told well you have to pay with an amex card they didn't know no this is probably key to the answer too They didn't know it had to be a platinum card. They just wanted to see an Amex card of any sort, which was fine with me. Yeah, yeah. And so I would think if you have an Amex card in the name of the person who's on the reservation, I think you're going to be fine. You know, we don't know for sure, but I think either of us would make that bet.

Yep. Pretty strongly. Okay. Well, if there you go, Katie, hopefully best of luck. Enjoy your stay. Let us know, you know, come back in December and let us know if you got your benefits. And if anybody else in the meantime, downgrades or cancels their card in this kind of a situation where you made the prepaid booking first and then canceled or downgraded and then had your stay, let us know how it worked out. Let us know that you got your

benefits because I'm sure that's probably what's going to happen. So thank you, Katie, for the question. Thank you everybody for listening. If you've enjoyed what you've been listening to today and you'd like to get on our email list, all you have to do is go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Again, that's frequentmiler.com slash subscribe. Join our email list. Join our Facebook group, The Frequent Miler Insiders. You can find us on all the various social media, wherever you're listening to this. Subscribe, enable notifications. It helps the channel out. If you're watching this on YouTube, make sure you hit subscribe. If you're listening to this in podcast form, go over to YouTube and hit subscribe. And also leave us feedback because we always love to hear your feedback. Thank you very much for being out there and we will see you guys again

next week. Thanks. Bye, everybody.