How to earn Delta elite status through credit card spend

Like most airlines, Delta offers extra benefits to their most valuable customers. They do this by awarding “Medallion” elite status with increased benefits at each level of status: Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond.  You can earn status by flying a lot and spending a lot with Delta.  Or, you can put lots of spend on Delta credit cards.  In this post you’ll find details about how this works and a discussion about whether it’s worthwhile.  Ultimately, whether it makes sense to do this depends upon your own situation and so I’ve included a spreadsheet that you can use to help make that decision for yourself.

Overview

You might wonder why bother earning elite status without flying? After all, the only way to enjoy those benefits is to fly, right? True, but there’s a difference between earning elite status through flying and enjoying elite status while flying. If you spend your way toward a higher level of elite status than you would have earned from flying alone, you may enjoy your flights more.

Now lets take a look at Delta’s requirements for each elite tier…

Delta Elite Status Requirements

Definitions:

• MQMs: Medallion Qualifying Miles can be roughly thought of as the actual miles flown. It’s important to understand that these are different from redeemable miles which can be used to book award flights. MQMs are only used for earning elite status.
• MQMs are earned on both paid flights with Delta or Delta partners where the flight is credited to your Delta account, and award flights booked through (and flying) Delta.
• MQSs: Medallion Qualifying Segments are the number of segments flown. Unless you fly a very large number of short flights, you are unlikely to earn elite status through MQSs.
• MQDs: Medallion Qualifying Dollars are the sum total of your base-fare spend (e.g. doesn't include taxes) on Delta-marketed flights.

Explanation:

In general, to reach each elite tier, Delta SkyMiles members must earn the stated number of MQMs or MQSs and spend the targeted amount of MQDs. In other words, its not enough to just fly far or often, you also need to spend a lot of money with Delta.

Additional Details:

• Award Tickets: Flights booked with Delta SkyMiles for Delta's own flights earn MQMs, MQSs, and MQDs.  Award tickets earn MQDs at a rate of 1 MQD per 100 SkyMiles redeemed (e.g. 1 cent per SkyMile).
• Partner Flights: Paid flights booked on Delta partners earn MQMs, MQSs, and MQDs as long as the member's Delta SkyMiles number is attached to the ticket.  MQDs are calculated as a percentage of miles flown rather than the amount paid.  Details, by partner, can be found here.
• Rollovers: Most airlines require that you fully re-earn status every calendar year. Delta is mostly that way too, but with one exception: as long as you earn Silver status or higher, any MQMs not used to reach status are rolled over to the next year. For example, if you earn 70,000 MQMs and meet Gold MQD requirements, you’ll earn Gold status (at 50,000 MQMs), and 20,000 MQMs will be rolled over to the next year to give you a jump start towards re-qualifying.
• MQD Waiver: There’s an easy exception to the MQD requirement for Silver, Gold, or Platinum status: Simply spend $25,000 or more with Delta branded credit cards and the MQD requirement goes away.  This feature requires having a Delta Platinum or Delta Reserve card, but the spend can be on other cards (such as Delta Blue or Delta Gold) or mixed across Delta cards.  Delta Platinum and Delta Reserve credit cards offer bonus MQMs for high spend, so it is possible to tackle both requirements (MQMs and MQDs) through spend without setting foot on a plane. Unfortunately, Delta requires $250,000 in credit card spend (across all Delta cards you have) to get a MQD waiver for top tier Diamond status.

Elite Benefits

Limits to Earning through Spend

It is possible to earn top tier Diamond elite status entirely through spend.  There are four different Delta cards that earn MQMs and it’s theoretically possible to own all four.  With enough spend, it’s possible for one person to manufacture up to 160,000 MQMs and a Diamond MQD Waiver each calendar year:

• Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card: Earn 10K MQMs from each $25K spend, up to $50K.  Max MQM earnings: 20K.
• Delta SkyMiles® Platinum Business American Express Card: Earn 10K MQMs from each $25K spend, up to $50K.  Max MQM earnings: 20K.
• Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card: Earn 15K MQMs from each $30K spend, up to $120K.  Max MQM earnings: 60K.
• Delta SkyMiles® Reserve Business American Express Card: Earn 15K MQMs from each $30K spend, up to $120K.  Max MQM earnings: 60K.

Delta Diamond status requires earning (or rolling over) 125K MQMs plus either 20,000 MQDs or an MQD Waiver.  To earn a Diamond MQD Waiver, you must spend $250,000 on Delta credit cards within the calendar year.  This can be accomplished in a number of ways, but one way to tackle both requirements is as follows:

• $120K spend on the Delta Reserve Business card, earn 60K MQMs
• $90K spend on the Delta Reserve consumer card, earn 45K MQMs
• $50K spend on a Delta Platinum card, earn 20K MQMs.
• Total spend: $260K (more than enough for a Diamond MQD Waiver)
• Total MQMs earned: 125K

It’s not even necessary to pay for three separate Delta credit card accounts to accomplish this.  If you start with the two Delta Reserve cards as shown above (business and personal), you could downgrade one of them to a Platinum card after completing your Delta Reserve spend.  Then, as long as you complete the Platinum spend within the same calendar year, you’ll earn up to 20K more MQMs with $50K spend.

What is Delta elite status worth?

Full details of how I arrived at the above numbers can be found in the post “What is Delta elite status worth?”  You can use these numbers as a general guideline, but you really should assess each elite benefit yourself.

What are Delta credit card benefits worth?

Part of the cost of manufacturing Delta elite status through spend is the annual fee for one or more Delta cards.  Fortunately, the Delta Platinum and Delta Reserve credit cards each come with valuable perks that can partially offset their fees.  As with Delta Elite status, the value of each perk depends upon your situation and your subjective valuation of each perk.  To figure out how much you would be willing to pay for each credit card perk, I recommend using the spreadsheet that accompanies the post “Which Premium Cards are Keepers?”  Be careful to consider the fact that a duplicative perk from having more than one card usually shouldn’t be valued as highly for the second card.  For example, you might be able to get good value from a single companion ticket each year, but a second one might go unused.  Similarly, it’s great to get Delta SkyClub access from one Delta Reserve card, but a second Delta Reserve card doesn’t make that SkyClub access any better at all.

Here are some of the benefits of each card that are arguably most valuable (not counting the ability to earn elite status through spend):

• Delta Gold, Platinum, and Reserve cards: Free checked bag
• Delta Gold, Platinum, and Reserve cards: 15% off award flights (yes, really)
• Delta Platinum cards: Economy Class Companion Certificate earned each year upon renewal
• Delta Reserve cards: First Class Companion Certificate earned each year upon renewal
• Delta Reserve cards: Delta Skyclub access for 1 when flying Delta
• Delta Reserve cards: 2 Delta Sky Club one-time guest passes
• Delta Reserve cards: Centurion Lounge access for 1 when flying Delta
• Delta Reserve cards: Upgrade priority over others with same elite status and fare class

Once you have a single Delta Reserve card, the only added benefits from a second one (besides being able to earn more MQMs with spend), is getting a second companion certificate and additional SkyClub guest passes.

The cost of spend: 2%

To see whether it is worth manufacturing Delta elite status through spend, it is first necessary to estimate the cost of spend.  And to do that, we need to decide first whether to look at fees incurred or opportunity cost.  It doesn’t make sense to look at both together.

Opportunity cost is most meaningful if you’re looking at regular everyday spend.  In that kind of spend, you have to make a choice, for example, of whether to pay with your Delta card or your 2% cash back card.  If you choose the Delta card, then it’s reasonable to say that the opportunity cost was 2%.  If you had spent $25,000 on your 2% card instead of your Delta Platinum card, for example, you would have $500 in the bank.  Instead, you earned 25,000 or more Delta SkyMiles plus 10,000 MQMs, plus a MQD waiver.  It is reasonable then to say that those things (the miles, MQMs, and MQD waiver) cost you $500 (or, more accurately, the opportunity cost for these things is $500).

On the other hand, if your spend is mostly extra spend done just to hit spend targets, then I think it makes more sense to look at fees involved in manufacturing that spend.  For example, if you pay bills with your credit card and your biller charges 3% to let you use a credit card, then the cost of spend is 3%.

The cost to manufacture spend varies widely depending upon how you do it.  At the very low end, it’s possible to buy Visa gift cards with very low fees and use them to buy money orders very cheaply.  Your total cost then to manufacture spend could be less than half a percent.  Unfortunately, Amex does not like when people do this, so there’s a chance that your account will get shut down or that Amex will stop paying rewards for this kind of spend (as they’ve already done with gift cards purchased at Simon Malls).  At the other end, it’s common to see fees of 3% or more for the convenience of using your credit card.  In the middle, you have federal tax payments that usually cost just under 2% (see: Pay taxes via credit card).

For the purpose of this post, let’s set the cost of spend at 2%.  That’s a conservative estimate of the cost to manufacture spend.  It’s also a reasonable estimate of opportunity cost.  In my specific situation, my real cost to manufacture spend is lower, but my opportunity cost is higher since I have the Bank of America Premium Rewards card with Platinum Honors which earns a minimum of 2.62% everywhere.  Anyway, it would drive a person nuts to try to figure out exactly when it makes sense to use opportunity cost instead of fee estimates, so I’m comfortable fudging it and going with this middle number: 2%.

Spend Scenarios

Earn Delta Silver Medallion status through spend

Silver status can be earned with 25K MQMs and a $25K MQD waiver.  Let’s assume that you earn 5K MQMs through actual flying or through rollover from the year before.  In that case, the cheapest path to manufacture Silver status is with a Delta Platinum card and $50K spend (which will give you 20K MQMs).  Here are the costs involved:

• Delta Platinum Card Annual Fee: $250
• $50K spend at 2%: $1,000

Value (swap out for your own values):

• Delta Platinum Card Perks: $200
• Delta SkyMiles Earned: 50,000 miles worth $650
  (This is conservatively based on Frequent Miler’s Reasonable Redemption Value of 1.3 cents per mile. Delta cardholders are more likely to get ~1.5 cents per mile value)
• Silver status value: $225

Is it worth it?

• Total cost: $1,250
• Total value: $1,075
• No it’s not worth it.

Note that the estimates above assume that you earn only 1 mile per dollar for all spend, but Delta cards do offer some bonus categories.  The consumer Platinum card earns 2X at restaurants and US Supermarkets, and 3X at hotels and on Delta.  The Business Platinum card earns 3X at hotels and on Delta and 1.5X on each eligible purchase of $5,000 or more (capped at $100K spend).  With these bonuses, it may be possible to earn many more redeemable miles than estimated above.  This could then make the effort worthwhile.

Earn Delta Gold Medallion status through Delta Reserve card spend

Gold status can be earned with 50K MQMs and a $25K MQD waiver.  Let’s assume that you earn 5K MQMs through actual flying or through rollover from the year before.  In that case, one path to manufacture Gold status is with a Delta Reserve card and $90K spend (which will give you 45K MQMs).  Here are the costs involved:

• Delta Reserve Card Annual Fee: $550
• $90K spend at 2%: $1,800

Value (swap out for your own values):

• Delta Reserve Card Perks: $500
• Delta SkyMiles Earned: 90,000 miles worth $1,170
  (This is conservatively based on Frequent Miler’s Reasonable Redemption Value of 1.3 cents per mile. Delta cardholders are more likely to get ~1.5 cents per mile value)
• Gold status value: $400

Is it worth it?

• Total cost: $2,350
• Total value: $2,070
• No it’s not worth it.

Note that the estimates above assume that you earn only 1 mile per dollar for all spend, but Delta Reserve cards earn 3X on Delta spend, so you may earn more miles.  If a lot of your spend is on Delta, though, you may not need to manufacture elite status at all since you may earn it through actual flights.

Earn Delta Gold Medallion status through Delta Platinum bonus spend

Delta Platinum cards have more useful bonus categories than Delta Reserve cards.  For example, the consumer card offers (among other things) 2X at US Supermarkets, and the Business Platinum card offers 1.5X on each eligible purchase of $5,000 or more (capped at $100K spend).  If you think that you’ll spend within these categories, it could make more sense to get both Platinum cards rather than one Reserve card.  At the extreme end, let’s assume that you spend $50K on the consumer Delta Platinum card entirely at grocery stores and $50K on the business Delta Platinum business card entirely with purchases of $5,000 or more.  In that case, here’s the math:

• Two Platinum Cards Annual Fee: $250 x 2 = $500
• $100K spend at 2%: $2,000

Value (swap out for your own values):

• First Delta Platinum Card Perks: $200
• Second Delta Platinum Card Perks: $100
• Delta SkyMiles Earned on Consumer Platinum card at 2X: 100,000 miles worth $1,300
  (based on Frequent Miler’s Reasonable Redemption Value of 1.3 cents per mile)
• Delta SkyMiles Earned on Business Platinum card at 1.5X: 75,000 miles worth $975
  (based on Frequent Miler’s Reasonable Redemption Value of 1.3 cents per mile)
• Gold status value: $400

Is it worth it?

• Total cost: $2,500
• Total value: $2,975
• Yes it’s worth it (but remember that this assumes all spend earns bonuses)
  

Earn Delta Platinum Medallion status through Delta Reserve card spend

Platinum status can be earned with 75K MQMs and a $25K MQD waiver.  Let’s assume that you earn 15K MQMs through actual flying or through rollover from the year before.  In that case, one path to manufacture Platinum status is with a Delta Reserve card and $120K spend (which will give you 60K MQMs).  Here are the costs involved:

• Delta Reserve Card Annual Fee: $550
• $120K spend at 2%: $2,400

Value (swap out for your own values):

• Delta Reserve Card Perks: $500
• Delta SkyMiles Earned: 120,000 miles worth $1,560
  (This is conservatively based on Frequent Miler’s Reasonable Redemption Value of 1.3 cents per mile. Delta cardholders are more likely to get ~1.5 cents per mile value)
• Platinum status value: $900

Is it worth it?

• Total cost: $2,950
• Total value: $2,960
• Yes it’s worth it by a hair

Earn Delta Diamond Medallion status through Delta Reserve card spend

Diamond status can be earned with 125K MQMs and a $250K MQD waiver.  Let’s assume that you earn 5K MQMs through actual flying or through rollover from the year before.  In that case, one path to manufacture Diamond status is with two Delta Reserve cards (one consumer card and one business card).  Spend $120,000 on one and $130,000 on the other.  This way you’ll get the Diamond MQD Waiver with $250K total spend plus 120K MQMs.  Here are the costs involved:

• Delta Reserve Card Annual Fee: $550 x 2 = $1,100
• $250K spend at 2%: $5,000

Value (swap out for your own values):

• Delta Reserve Card Perks: $500 for first card plus $200 for second card = $700
• Delta SkyMiles Earned: 250,000 miles worth $3,250
  (This is conservatively based on Frequent Miler’s Reasonable Redemption Value of 1.3 cents per mile. Delta cardholders are more likely to get ~1.5 cents per mile value)
• Diamond status value: $2,600

Is it worth it?

• Total cost: $6,100
• Total value: $6,550
• Yes it’s worth it, but not by a wide margin
  

The figure-it-out-yourself spreadsheet

I’ve shown above the math for various scenarios for manufacturing Delta elite status.  That said, there countless scenarios that I didn’t cover.  I can’t guess how many MQMs you will roll over year after year.  Nor can I guess how much you value various credit card perks, elite perks, or SkyMiles.  Rather than guessing, I’ve created a spreadsheet to help you model these scenarios.  This spreadsheet is currently still in beta (and has been since 2019!).  In other words, I don’t consider it fully tested or complete.  And there are no instructions.  That said, there’s probably enough there and working for a few diligent readers to figure it out and benefit from it.

If you’re interested, click here to make a copy of the spreadsheet so that you can input your own values.  Cells in green are meant to be overwritten.  Don’t overwrite any other cells.

Conclusion

It is possible to spend your way to Delta Elite status.  Is it worth it?  That depends on many, many factors.  Do you fly Delta often enough to value elite perks?  How much do you value the credit cards you need to do this?  How much does it cost you to put extra spend on those cards?  The questions go on and on.

In my case, I have a huge number of MQMs that have rolled over from previous years.  As a result, I only need to spend $25K on a single Delta card to get the MQD Waiver for Platinum status.  It’s a no-brainer to do that.  The real question for me is whether it will ever make sense again to spend my way to Delta Diamond status as I have often done in the past.  My primary motivation in the past for seeking Diamond status was to get Global Upgrade Certificates, but I’ve been extremely frustrated with them since Delta changed how they work in 2022.  Now, I’d rather focus on other ways of flying up-front.

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