Delta is out with a truly innovative promotion named “2022 Medallion® Status Accelerators.” Starting April 1 and throughout the rest of 2021, Delta fliers will earn 50% to 75% more towards elite status. That’s great, but that’s not the most interesting part: In 2021, award flights earn towards elite status too. You can read Delta’s announcement here.
Delta elite requirements
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.
Elite Benefits
Delta’s chart of elite benefits can be found here. Here’s a summarized chart I created:
Promotion Overview
For all Delta flights beginning April 1 and through December 31, 2021, fliers earn 50% to 75% more MQMs, MQDs, and MQSs towards Medallion elite status:
- Main cabin bookings (including basic economy) earn 50% more MQMs, MQDs, and MQSs
- Premium cabin bookings (Comfort+, First Class, Premium Select, and Delta One) earn 75% more MQMs, MQDs, and MQSs
- Award tickets earn MQMs, MQDs, and MQSs! MQMs and MQSs are calculated the same way as paid tickets. MQDs are calculated as (number of miles redeemed) / 100 and then the 50% or 75% bonus is added on top. For example, if you redeem 50,000 miles for Comfort+, you’ll earn (50K / 100) x 1.75 = 875 MQDs. Another way to think of it is that you’ll earn MQDs as if each mile was a penny of Delta spend.
- Miles + Cash tickets: MQDs will be calculated based on the original all-miles price of the ticket.
Delta provides this example chart to help us understand how this works:
Bonuses apply to all of the following flights:
- Delta marketed and operated flights flown April 1 to December 31 2021.
- Pay with Miles tickets
- Flights booked as a part of a Delta Vacations® package
- Miles + Cash tickets
- Delta award tickets (only those booked with Delta miles and for Delta operated flights)
The bonus will not apply to travel on Partner Airlines, mileage upgrade awards, exception fares (not including flights that are a part of a Delta Vacations package), upgrades purchased at check-in or at the gate, or purchases/mileage redemptions of non-air products or fees.
More info
- For April 1-May 15, 2021 travel, bonus MQMs, MQSs and MQDs will be retroactively credited to your account by May 31, 2021.
- Bonuses are only applicable to earning Medallion Status, redeemable miles on Delta flights remain the same. E.g. you won’t earn redeemable miles when booking awards and you’ll earn the standard number of redeemable miles on paid flights.
- Bonuses will also apply to challenges such as Reclaim My Status and Status Match, so while challenge thresholds won’t change, you’ll have an accelerated path to completion.
- Bonus MQMs will apply to your Million Miler Status Qualification.
- Partial segments: You won’t see partial segments in your account. Bonuses will be added incrementally once you’ve flown enough to add up to 1 whole bonus segment. You will see the bonus segment in your account after you’ve flown the segment that helped you reach one whole bonus segment. At the end of the year, any partial segments will be rounded up to one whole segment.
- Pay with Miles tickets: MQDs will be calculated based on the original full fare and carrier-imposed surcharges, before miles are applied.
- Paid upgrades (paid with cash or miles): Bonuses are based on the cabin you paid to upgrade to.
- Complementary upgrades: Bonuses are based on the cabin you paid for, not the cabin you are upgraded to.
- Upgrade certificates: Bonuses are based on the cabin you paid for, not the cabin you are upgraded to.
- Companion certificates: Only the primary flier will earn MQMs, MQDs or MQSs. As usual, the companion doesn’t earn any of these things.
My Thoughts
It’s about time! As airlines have increasingly priced award tickets similarly to cash tickets (especially Delta), I’ve long thought that award tickets should earn elite qualifying miles and dollars just like paid tickets do. The current promo is only for 2021, but I’m hoping that Delta will treat this aspect of the promo as a test and will ultimately keep it in place going forward. We’ll see! They recently took permanent steps towards treating award tickets like paid tickets by allowing upgrade certificates to be used on awards. That’s one great step forward and this is, hopefully, another.
As to the 50% to 75% elite boost, I think its pretty much right on the mark for what’s needed this year. If international travel doesn’t recover by late summer, they may have to go even further with elite rollovers to 2022 or by lowering elite thresholds or something. For now, though, I think that this is just enough to do what Delta surely wants: incentivize fliers interested in elite status to fly with Delta rather than competitors.
One very interesting aspect of this is that Comfort+ tickets earn at the same rate as First Class and Delta One. That’s interesting because there are times where Comfort+ isn’t much more expensive than main cabin economy. In fact, I recall recently seeing situations where the Comfort+ award price was actually cheaper than main cabin! The plus side for this is that it should be fairly cheap and easy to get a 75% bonus. The downside is for those of us elites who purchase main cabin with the expectation of a free upgrade to Comfort+: that cabin may often be sold out. Or maybe Delta will just raise Comfort+ prices from the get-go. We’ll see.
Your thoughts?
What do you think of Delta’s promo? Good, bad, or indifferent? Has this changed your thoughts about seeking Delta elite status? Comment below.
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Now we want the next article to describe the smart way to beat the system with miles only: some kind of tricks to book with miles where can quickly earn multiple segments for as low miles as possible (to quickly hit 30 MQS required for silver) or a quick way to hit MQD’s. The thing is, most people earn MQM’s through credit card, but it is really hard to hit the MQS and MQD so my MQM’s just expire in the year I get them through credit card, because I don’t want to do all that $25K worth of MS’ing
Greg, please confirm the math regarding using DL mileage award tickets. If you flew on a 50K award, you would earn 875 MQDs, correct? If correct, that would mean you would only need to fly on enough award tickets totaling 857K DL miles to meet the $15K MQD requirement. If correct, please advise your thoughts on whether this is a good deal per your current mileage valuations.
That’s correct (assuming you book Comfort+ or higher). I don’t think that’s a great deal though to try to find 857K worth of Delta awards: the MQDs are still calculated based on “price” but in this case it assumes your miles are only worth 1 cent each. Instead, I’d look at it this way: the Diamond MQD requirement is waaaay easier to meet this year thanks to both the 75% bonus and the fact that award tickets count.
Are these bonuses on top of current earning rates for MQM’s referenced back to percentage of mileage flown?
for example fare class G (premium select on international routes) currently earns MQM’s = 150% of distance flown. Does this flight now earn MQM = 225% of distance flown? If so, this could be a nice sweet spot.
It appears to be even better than that. The Delta FAQ states the following:
This implies (and some other info on the same page supports this) that if you would normally earn 150% MQMs, then you’ll earn a total of 262% MQMs! Take the example above where it says “if you would usually earn 2,000 MQMs on a flight booked in First Class…” We can assume that the miles flown were 1,333 miles and so normally you’d earn 1,333 x 1.5 = 2,000. And the example says that you’ll end up with 3,500 MQMs, so that’s 262%: 3500 / 1333 = 2.62565…
[…] Delta Elite status via award tickets, plus 50% to 75% elite bonus on all tickets! This was the most interesting development for sure. And surprising to say the least. And as a long follower of how this company operates I am afraid they will soon follow this with a major WHACKING of something…brace for impact! […]
Do you know if delta tickets (marketed and operated) booked through amex international travel would earn the same kind of bonuses?
I expect so
I just had my return flight on Delta and with the seat blocking it was great. Personally I value personal space the most on airplanes and don’t care much about food, alcohol, etc.
Sadly they are ending that 1 May.
And I just missed the bonus by a couple of days.
Speaking of hotels I found staying at a Hampton Inn preferably to a Marriott (Courtyard) due to having actual soap and bottles of shampoo unlike the larger plastic containers Marriott uses.
Indifferent.
Fly other airlines.
Looks like Skymiles ARE worth more than AAdvantage miles afterall!
So do award tickets booked using Flying Blue, Virgin, etc. on Delta metal where you add your Delta FF # earn MQM/MQDs?
No
Don’t know when I’ll next fly, but it definitely makes upgrading to C+ or First with SkyMiles more attractive!
Very interesting. I am sure this will help some more than others, but overall my first impression is positive.
In recent times, it has seemed that Delta really wants people to use their miles on their planes, and this goes along with that. It also makes Delta miles slightly more valuable to a Delta elite member. I would often be hesitant to use Delta miles because I felt like I needed more Delta MQMs and MQDs, and now that is less of an issue.
What happens when you have a mixed carrier paid or award ticket? Like if I fly Delta long haul to Europe (when I am allowed to), which a short KLM flight to my final destination (purchased from Delta)? I would imagine I only get a MQM boost on the Delta segments, but how would the MQD boost work?
Yes mixed itineraries are assigned MQMs etc based on the delta portion only. The delta announcement has details including how MQDs are assigned.
This does nothing for Delta’s foreign-based elites. US travel is at like what, 60% of pre-covid levels? That’s much higher than in most other places (China being a notable exception).
I’m EU-based and currently can’t fly Delta at all. All I have is some minor inta-European travel on AFKL and the promo doesn’t help with that.
I realize this is somewhat of a peripheral issue. Most of your blog readers are gonna be US-based. Most Delta elites are gonna be US based, too. Still, for the small minority of medallions hailing from abroad this promo isn’t helping much.
Good point. I didn’t think of that angle
Just curious, why would you credit flights to Delta instead of Flying Blue? I’m also based in Europe and, pre-COVID at least, it seemed much easier to earn meaningful status (Gold = lounge access and free bags) on Flying Blue. Is it the upgrade certificates that push you to Delta?
Now if delta will do a stutus match
They do. There’s a link in the post
But I wonder if they would status match with mileage earned from the award travel