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Has Delta Learned Anything Regarding SkyMiles During COVID19? The Last Delta Earnings Report is Not Very Encouraging!

René by René
January 25, 2021
in Travel Related
4
a man driving a small vehicle on a runway

Advertiser Disclosure: Eye of the Flyer, a division of Chatterbox Entertainment, Inc., is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact how and where card products appear on the site. This site does not include all card companies or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. Some of the links on this page are affiliate or referral links. We may receive a commission or referral bonus for purchases or successful applications made during shopping sessions or signups initiated from clicking those links.

I always listen in on the Delta DAL quarterly earnings calls. This is not because I care at all about the Delta stock price because I am not foolish enough to ever “invest” my money into any airline – Delta included. No, I listen in, very closely, to see if there are any tiny nuggets that will impact me as a frequent flyer who is focused on extracting value from my SkyMiles and, in a normal year, what changes could impact my medallion status.

So what can we glean from the latest call? Let’s peek at some points extracted from SeekingAlphas post of the call:

“Our partners at American Express are also seeing encouraging signs, whether it’s cardholders holding on to their points in anticipation of redeeming them for air travel, for a recent survey that suggested approximately 70% of respondents expect to take a trip in 2021 after not traveling in 2020. Although it will take time, customers want to travel again when they feel it’s safe.” – Ed Bastian, Delta CEO

…and

“American Express has shared its spending on our co-branded card portfolio has performed in line to slightly better in their overall card portfolio spend in 2020.” – Glen Hauenstein Delta President (bold mine)

Oh boy. So very few folks are flying and, as a result, that should have shocked absolutely no one, folks are saving or holding their SkyMiles. The disturbing thing to me is, according to the Delta President a.k.a. Mr. Ham Sandwich himself, that “we” are still just spending away on our Delta Amex cards comparted to a good cash back card (what I did during 2020).

I don’t get this!

Unless there has been a promotion that has paid me back more than the cost of the spend I have not put a single dollar on ANY of my Delta Amex cards and even took the unimaginable step during a normal year of downgrading my Delta Reserve card to a Blue card. Why in the world would Tom, Dick and Harry* (*names have been changed to protect their reputations) keep spending on Delta cards?

And that brings us to the next part, later on in the call, which made me a bit queasy. Let’s read on:

“You mentioned that there was a lot of pent-up demand and also the hoarding of points from the [Skymiles] Program. What happens if a lot of people try to redeem it once? Is that something that you’re expecting based on search data and other things?” – Leslie Josephs (reporter)

“We’re happy and really are indifferent whether or not people who are booking are using points or whether or not they’re using actual dollars, or whether they’re using the E-credits, what we’re anticipating is that all of those will increase. And we have plenty of capacity to meet that demand as we head to the second half of ’21. So we’re hoping that all of the above happens.” – Ed Bastian Delta CEO (bold mine)

and…

“From talking to American Express, good partners there, it’s clear that people place great value on their loyalty points with Delta and like to see the values grow over time. And so while they’ve been in the pandemic, we’ve seen redemption’s down four points, because flying levels are down. But they haven’t stopped spending on the card, our Co-brand card is as good if not better than almost any other product card, AmEx has. So it has great appeal. And we expect it’s not going to be, not to be run on the bank type situation that you’re referring to.” – Gary Chase Delta (bold mine)

Shudder! 🙁

There is so much going on here that my head may explode (yours may have already done so and then you don’t get to read the rest of my post – sorry) and this is why I am so fearful for the future once COVID is gone.

First up that anyone would EVER use the comparison of a “run on the bank” when it comes to SkyMiles. One only does something like this because they have lost all confidence in a bank and it seems, confusingly, folks have not lost all confidence in the value of holding Skymiles. This is really stupid when we have seen during COVID that Delta has:

  • Decimated partner redemption levels (unannounced as always)
  • Is charging an absurd amount of points for Summer 2021 Delta One travel
  • Has not removed the nasty Delta “DieMiles” during COVID
  • Has not moved to restore value by adding back stopovers on awards

I have lost so much confidence in SkyMiles that I took last year the once-unimaginable step of redeeming 20,000 Skymiles, in a roundabout way, for a Lowe’s gift card vs. keeping the points. I have reached the point that I no longer have much trust at all in SkyMiles and will do my best to no longer “horde” them. Let’s move on.

I was really hoping Delta would use this opportunity to reverse course on the drive to fully embrace revenue-based redemption but clearly, as we can see from the CEO’s comments, they view Skymiles redemptions the same as cash! Not good.

a screenshot of a flight schedule

This means we can expect more and more SkyMiles price increases and higher redemption levels for Delta One awards moving forward. Delta feels they are so good they are worth a “premium” price and that means we can fully expect the same premium redemption levels for our SkyMiles (making them worth MUCH LESS than almost any other points – even cash). The point is if a SkyMile is worth only a penny  – or less –  we might as well give up and go for a cashback card and then, when we follow this to the conclusion, consider other airlines who may have a better product or service than Delta!

Let’s boil all of this down to a simple conclusion of what we can expect once we all get back to safe and normal travel either late this year or into 2022. I think Delta is going to continue to dilute and devalue the value of SkyMiles. Everything will cost us more and more. Delta has Amex telling them they can keep doing all the horrid things they have done for years with no fear of loss of fools who will keep spending on Delta Amex cards for less in return.

…and you thought COVID19 was bad? You ain’t seen nothing yet! – René

 

Advertiser Disclosure: Eye of the Flyer, a division of Chatterbox Entertainment, Inc., is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact how and where card products appear on the site. This site does not include all card companies or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. Some of the links on this page are affiliate or referral links. We may receive a commission or referral bonus for purchases or successful applications made during shopping sessions or signups initiated from clicking those links.

Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

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René

René

René de Lambert is a contributing writer for EyeoftheFlyer.com - He is an avid Delta and SkyTeam flyer who has held Delta’s top Diamond Medallion status for many years and flown millions of miles.

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Comments 4

  1. leesa daisy says:
    4 years ago

    Thanks for the great post!

    Reply
  2. Frankie says:
    4 years ago

    You fail to mention the MQM boost one gets from AMEX spending. Making PM year after year based on very little travel to reach 75,000 MQMs gives me immense benefits and many waivers and favors and one-tome exceptions that beat any other credit card. My redeeming and reinstating 50-60 award tickets for free for my family of 5 alone is worth a small fortune every year.

    Reply
    • Kevin says:
      4 years ago

      100% with you here… I have only been able to maintain Diamond year after year by earning extra MQMs from the Delta Reserve card. I padded my MQM balance last year by using PWM for all my travel all year long, since MQDs didn’t matter. I started 2021 off with around 250k MQM. For me it was a perfect way to burn through a half a million skymiles and still earn even more MQM

      Reply
  3. Too Many says:
    4 years ago

    This is old news with Delta and how they view Skymiles. The moment they took down the award chart was the official declaration they are treating Skymiles as a currency that they ultimately will couple to the cost of the ticket, Which means it doesn’t make sense to earn Skymiles.

    One is better off getting a cash reward card then stuck with ever declining values on SkyPeso program. I dumped mine on a last hurray 6 years ago flying business class to Asia when the award chart still existed and rumors of the disappearing award chart was beginning to crest.

    Reply

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