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Delta Air Lines announced in March that SkyMiles members may earn 50%-75% elite qualifying bonuses from eligible flights flown through the rest of 2021 (even on award tickets!). The airline dubbed this the Medallion “Accelerator.”
But Delta originally said that MQD and MQM bonuses wouldn’t be reflected on an itinerary’s check-out/payment page. If you wanted to figure out how many MQD and MQM you’d earn, you had to manually multiply the displayed earnings by 1.5 (for Main Cabin) or 1.75 (premium cabins) to get the approximate totals. No major task to do that, of course.
Some people feared, though, Delta wouldn’t correctly credit the MQM, MQD, and MQS bonuses. And some of those worries partly came true. (Luckily, none of my trips received incorrect earnings.)
Now, Delta apparently tweaked its system: both its website and app display the “accelerated” MQM and MQD your trips will earn this year. Yay!
Right?
Well, only certain itineraries get the “Accelerated” display treatment.
And some show zero earnings.
Delta “Accelerated”/Bonus MQM and MQD Earnings
I selected two LAX-JFK roundtrips for our examples.
One is for January 2022 — which is when the bonus earnings will theoretically be gone. Here’s what SkyMiles members normally earn:
The same trip in December 2021 earns the “accelerated”/bonused figures:
The feature also works on the app.
But as of this posting, the bonuses earnings are displayed only for revenue itineraries.
No MQM and MQD on Pay With Miles Tickets?!
I tried to use the Pay With Miles feature on the same sample itinerary.
I applied 60,000 SkyMiles to save $600 of the total price. Delta’s Pay With Miles tickets earn full MQM. (They only earn MQD on any eligible cash put towards the fare.) So far, so good!
But look what happened when I bumped it up to 65,000 SkyMiles.
No bueno.
Delta Pay With Miles tickets are expressly included in the Accelerator promotion. And Delta says on this page:
Pay with Miles tickets are eligible for MQMs and MQSs. In addition, Pay with Miles tickets will earn mileage and MQDs for the portion of the base fare and carrier-imposed surcharges remaining that is paid in currency after miles are applied to the ticket total.
So 0 MQM and 0 MQD was rather alarming to see. I assume this is a Delta IT error.
Award tickets booked with SkyMiles do not show any MQM or MQD earnings on their check-out/purchase pages. Again, award tickets are part of the Accelerator deal.
A good tool is the Unofficial SkyMiles Calculator. Enter your routing and fare class — then multiply its calculations by 1.5 (again, Basic Economy or Main Cabin) or 1.75 (C+ and higher).
Final Approach
It’s nice to see Delta’s website and app correctly displaying the bonused MQM and MQD on a flight’s purchase page. Well, when it works. I hope they fix the Pay With Miles bug soon. And it would be nice if they added the earnings projections to award ticket pages, too.
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.
I saw “Delta’s Website” and “Accelerated” and for a few seconds I was excited…
Psych.