Q&A - December 30th
Good Afternoon,
Please see the Q&A below from yesterday. As a reminder, this will be our last post this week. We'll be back on Monday January 3rd to answer questions from over the holiday weekend.
We hope you all have a safe and wonderful New Year.
Official SkyMiles Helper
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OSH, one of the biggest gripes that many of us have with both the old or new FF program is the lack of SkySaver award inventory that is being made available to us. It is disgraceful to be offered a 2 or 3 flight itinerary to fly LGA-FLL/PBI on a SkySaver award (and that's if we are lucky to find a SkySaver award). The Song non-stops are rarely offered as SkySavers, as the majority of the time they appear as a SkyChoice award. Only DL knows what the outstanding mileage figure is that we all have banked in our SkyMiles accounts. The number must be staggering to say the very least. I understand that a test with no capacity controls on any award was held by DL a few months back for a two week period. By this time, I am confident that you know the results.
When will DL do the "right thing", open up more award inventory and let us redeem our miles without the SkyChoice surcharge?
• We understand this is a concern and 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.
Originally the MQM system was implemented to reward high-paying travelers, the more you paid for a ticket, the higher the MQM multiplier, pax and Delta were happy. While I fully understand the reasons for making no MQM distinction between MBY and discounted First (A) or BC (I) fares, I fail to see the reason to put full fare F and J fares into the same multiplier as the discounted F/C fares / full MBY fares. With a difference in pricing of $5,000 - $7,000 for an International itinerary confirmed in BC depending on whether it is in I (approx. $2,500) or in J (approx. $8,000) I am at a loss as to why Delta would not at a minimum keep the x2 MQM multiplier for the significantly higher revenue tickets. For those of us who have access to both these buckets (I/J), I would think that whatever Delta can do to push us towards the J fare should be done whereas now with the reduction in MQM's from the full fare, it pushes us more towards spending that day or two extra in Europe and go for the I-fare. What possible benefit to Delta is retreating from rewarding their very highest fare payers by reducing the MQM's obtainable in 2005 compared to 2004?
• High-revenue customers are still very important to us, but trends in the last two years have shifted toward lower fares. Also, customers and employees told us the old MQM multiplier was confusing, so we’ve simplified the system. Moving forward, we will continue to provide richer benefits to high-revenue customers while making our program more attainable for customers who purchase lower fares. Our total value offering will continue to improve once we roll out more elements of our transformation plan.
When the high-mileage PM's, like myself, have whined bitterly over the new changes seemingly bringing nothing new or additionally to us, but instead potentially taking quite a bit more of these benefits away, we are told there will be "targeted benefits offered to our very high-mileage customers". Having flown often, far and high most of 2004, I have yet to receive a single targeted benefit for my efforts over 150K MQM's. Thus this statement means nothing to me unless it can be specified, either here or in a PM, exactly what we can expect as such targeted benefits, as it could encompass anything from a "thank you card" (and thank you for your good wishes in the Christmas Card you sent me this year!!!) to meaningful certificates or exemptions. I recommend this be communicated to us soon as otherwise some of us will start to diversify by keeping our minimum 75K on Delta to maintain PM and the rest (100K+) to build top-tier level on another airline as there appears nothing lost doing that and thus with this all of a sudden being much more attractive to the detriment of Delta.
• Again, I wish I could provide specific details but our marketing efforts are confidential and cannot be disclosed. We do, however, plan to review members' accounts in early 2005 and may offer select members benefits or promotions based on previous flight activity.