Q&A - December 22nd
Hi Everyone,
Below are our responses from yesterday's questions. This will be our last Q&A before the holiday and want to extend our wishes for a safe and happy holiday. One minor change to our schedule...we will be returning to answer questions on Tuesday December 28th. This is a change from our initial schedule of Monday December 27th.
Thanks again and happy holidays.
Official SkyMiles Helper
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Upgrade Questions
… would you share with us exactly what the algorithm for gate upgrade processing will be? And, as Rssrsvp notes, the question is whether each fare bucket is considered individually, or are they organized into groups of buckets where all individual buckets in the group are considered equal?
• As you all know, the current upgrade process is complicated, and we’ll be making several changes over the next year to make it more seamless, including the airport stand by list. For gate processing, all YBM upgrades will be processed first and based on timestamp, independent of tier. The three remaining categories will be PM, GM & FO and, within each tier for non-YBM purchases, they will be sorted by class of service
Mileage Questions
I've been reading FT discussions without posting for a long time, but today I have a question that I think hasn't been asked by anyone in this thread. I am wondering about actual miles, not MQMs. The Helper wrote this in an earlier thread: >>Class of Service Fare Class Medallion Qualification Miles & Award Miles Earned Example of Medallion Qualification Miles & Award Miles Earned. First, BusinessElite, Business and Full-fare Economy P, F, A, J, D, C, I, Y, B, M 150% of flown miles.<<On YBM? Isn't this a huge change? I assume award miles means actual miles, i.e. MUC-ATL in M 4801*1.5=7,201 miles? If so, what happens to the Gold/Plat mileage bonus? On top? I.e., 14,402 miles total? Please clarify.
• When flying on a Y, B or M fare, customers will receive 150% of mileage flown towards qualification and award travel alike. This is new, as members previously received 100% of flown miles
• Award miles does equate to actual miles, meaning these are the miles that may be redeemed for award travel.
• There is no change to the current Medallion mileage bonus. For instance, in the example above (GM flying MUC-ATL in M class), you would earn 7201 miles toward elite qualification (4800 x 1.5) and 7201 (4800 x 1.5) toward award travel. Assuming you’re a Medallion, you would receive your respective Elite Tier bonus as well, which is calculated off the base miles. A GM or PM in this example would earn an additional 4,801 miles towards award travel.
May I follow up on the last question? It appears that class of service bonus and MQM "bonus" are identical; i.e., 1.0 for fares T through H and 1.5 for M through F. If so, why do we even need to retain MQMs anymore?
• Correct, class of service and MQM bonus are the same thing. We continue to use the MQM system because you can earn miles for award travel through various other means (AMEX, Hilton, Elite Tier Bonus, etc). Those miles need to be in a different bucket because they are solely for award travel.
Fee Questions
ODH, glad to see Delta on the FlyerTalk board as I have worked in the past with Delta corporate customer care. I'm a Platinum Medallion with 150k MQM's this year (mostly international) and one of AirTran's most frequent flyers. I view the changes overall as a positive. Yet I'm very upset at one SkyMiles change near and dear to my heart: flexibility for award tickets. Delta really missed one big point when making these changes. Platinum Medallions like to be treated as an exception. If I give tremendous amounts of money to an airline, then the one time that I need help as a Delta customer is when I'm traveling personally. Adding $50 change fees on changing frequent flyer tickets hits Delta business customers where it hurts most: their pockets. While posting $50 change fees on their rules, AirTran absolutely will make exceptions for its Elite members. When they do, they make it clear that they're an airline that cares. My three questions are:
• We are continually working to improve award seat availability, even though our record is one of the best in the industry. This announcement is just the beginning of our long-term plan to simplify our program and make it more relevant for members.
- Why did Delta elect not to waive the SkyMiles award change fee for their most loyal customers?
• Customers and employees told us the old award ticket fee structure was confusing, so we’ve significantly simplified the new fee structure. Now the fees are uniform for General and Medallion members and in many cases the new award price is lower than the previous Medallion rate