Delta AMEX Strategy

[parzivalmx]

Sorry for the confusion. Yeah I’ll have 30kMQMs between January and feb. I live in San Diego and I fly with Aeromexico a lot which give the miles but not to many MQDs if I don’t fly biz. Also I will be taking some international flights that were cheap. And for example if I fly to San Jose I get 2000MQMs but only around 60MQDs. So doing my calculations I’ll be short on MQDs.

[iced]

I’m a little surprised to hear only 60 MQD on a 2000 mile route. I do BOS-SLC a lot, which is 2100 MQM each way, and even in MC on a cheap ticket it’s good for 150-300 MQD each way. Are you already flying this route and seeing 60 MQD credited, or is this a projection for future flights?

If you’ve flown UA in the past, I’d believe you on the 60 - they’re cheap about cutting everything they can out of PQD calculations. DL not so much, and they even credit upgrades as MQD.

[Anonymous]

SJC-SAN is indeed very cheap, routingly go for 100USD RT at basic. Delta does give 2000 MQM RT for some reason, even though its only 400 miles one way.

Literally you can fly this route every day of the year and only get 10k MQDs.

[parzivalmx]

Yes, you get a minimun of 500MQM's per segment so RT SAN-LAX-SJC gives you 2000 MQMs

[iced]

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@parzivalmx wrote:

Yes, you get a minimun of 500MQM's per segment so RT SAN-LAX-SJC gives you 2000 MQMs

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That makes some sense on the cost then. You're basically taking a bunch of shuttles and the minimum MQM threshold is what's pushing it higher.

In that case, the waiver may make sense for you provided it doesn't mean you're spending too much to meet it. By that, I mean that if all you take is shorter flights, the benefits of Diamond end up being pretty negligible compared to Platinum, which you would certainly make MQD on (60 * 15 (flights per month to 30K MQM) * 12 (months) > $9,000), so you don't want to spend more getting the waiver for Diamond than you would reap from being Diamond over Platinum. The upgrades and certs don't mean much when all your flights are under a couple of hours, after all.

If you don't want to deal with another card, you can also upgrade a few flights out of pocket so that you hit the $15k mark. If the MC fares are that low, FC upgrades likely aren't more than a couple hundred each. This would make sense particularly if you're having to take spend you otherwise wouldn't take to meet the $250k waiver, or if you were putting spend on the card solely to meet the MQD waiver that could be better placed on a different card to earn a better award return.