In addition to adding lifetime Diamond Medallion status for 6 million milers, Delta Air Lines recently made a change to the Medallion complimentary upgrade hierarchy: Million Miler status is now a tie-breaker.
But don’t get too excited.
Million Miler status is now the sixth tie-breaker — out of seven criteria. The only thing below it is “Date and time of upgrade request.”
Here’s what the new hierarchy now looks like:
I think it’s great that, at long last, Million Milers get a little love when it comes to Comfort+ and First Class upgrades. But the big takeaway for us is that Delta still values earning yearly Medallion Status above everything else, then how much you paid for your ticket, and rounding out the top 3 that you hold a cobranded Delta Reserve card from American Express.
Will Higher Million Miler Levels Get Priority Over “Lower” Million Milers?
This is something that remains to be answered, whether or not, say, a Two or Three Million Miler would have upgrade priority over a One Million Miler. I didn’t find any verbiage on Delta.com indicating either way. (Frankly, there are so many higher-level tie-breakers ahead of Million Miler status — I doubt this will regularly be a big issue).
I contacted Delta Corp. and will let you know if they provide any clarification.
Another obvious issue with this latest “enhancement” to reward many, many years of loyalty to Delta is that much of this depends on a number of factors that may make this all but pointless.
Like what?
We are assuming Delta IT will work the same way Delta has posted on Delta.com. Next up, as we saw just recently on Rene’s first-ever A220 flight, we are at the complete mercy of the Delta gate agents to actually follow the posted guidelines and not do things like upgrade others before loyal frequent flyers.
Final Approach
Delta’s Million Milers now have an official dedicated spot in the complimentary upgrade hierarchy. It’s definitely a positive move — though I don’t know how often the tie-breaker will actually be needed or work as posted.
What do you think about this?
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Chris:
You seem to have some insight to Delta’s systems, have you ever heard the actual number of Million Milers?
or perhaps how many Diamond elites Delta has per year??
Thanks
I haven’t — but always have my ears and eyes open!
Yay! I was hoping that MM would amount to something other than the occasional “Thanks.”
Finally acknowledged DL Million Milers a bit. Do you think DL will roll over Medallion status for another year?
@Tom – Yep. See current live post regarding status.
As you stated no big change since low in priority determination. However one thing you didn’t point out is that if you are a million miler (3 million for me) you automatically have the most important criteria which is medallion status even if you don’t ever fly DL. I earned mine years ago and now live in an AA hub (3 million miler w them as well and lifetime Platinum) so I rarely fly DL. However I almost always, even as a lowly Gold, get Comfort+ and sometimes even first.