Triangle Trip

In response to Delta‘s recent offer (link to register) for Triple Miles and MQM (Medallion Qualifying Miles) between New York’s La Guardia airport (LGA) and Chicago’s O’Hare (ORD), United launched its own Triple Miles and EQM (Elite Qualifying Miles) yesterday (link to register). However United’s Triple EQM is a bit limited compared to Delta’s offer. United’s offer is only valid to residents from the following states: Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, New York, Connecticut or New Jersey. United’s Triple MQM offer is only valid for itineraries for travel solely between Chicago O’Hare (ORD) and New York LaGuardia (LGA) so layovers on a coast to coast flight or somewhere in the Midwest does not count.

Delta’s Triple Miles and MQM offer is a lot sweeter. Basically all you have to do is hop on the Delta Shuttle from LGA to either ORD, DCA (Washington DC) or BOS (Boston). There are not residency restrictions. I also believe Delta has upgraded most of its Delta Shuttle flights to new Embraer planes. Both offers start in mid June and end on August 31, 2010.

Delta has been expanding its presences in the greater New York area for the past two years with non-stop flights from JFK to SFO, LAX and ORD. The coast to cost long haul flights used to be United and American’s bread and butter in the New York market since they don’t really have a strong presence in NYC (I have made 1K on United and Executive Platinum on AA on the same year doing these coast to coast trips). United and AA also dominated the LGA/ORD route as well – I have made United 1K just doing this route.

We glad to see Delta is in the mix and playing with the big boys! Now we have three options to go from JFK to the West coast, Midwest and even London Heathrow. The increased in competition should be great for NYC-based travelers as we do not have a hometown airline or airline using NYC as a hub. Sorry, JetBlue doesn’t have enough of a presence in the globe and Newark doesn’t really count as NYC. Now we will wait to see when the airlines look for their bailout (see previous post).

True to its words, Delta has deposited the Rollover MQM (Medallion Qualification Miles) to my SkyMiles account (see previous post regarding Delta adding Rollover MQM).

As you can see below, I flew 56,187 air miles on Delta in 2009; and I’ve received 6,187 MQM for 2010. I have not been on a Delta flight in 2010. Getting the 6,000+ MQM is a great start to my chase to retain at least Gold Medallion status on Delta in 2010.

Kudos to the Delta SkyTeam for delivering the rollover miles; Starwood still hasn’t delivered their promised SPG’s Rollover Nights yet.

Delta introduced two major changes to the 2010 SkyMiles program: 1) Rollover Medallion Qualifying Miles (Rollover MQM) which lets you build status toward the following year; and 2) a new Medallion class: Diamond which requires you to have 125,000 MQM. We are extremely pleased to see this change as it is definitely ground breaking for the airline industry.

I have been traveling coast to coast on United and Delta for the past six months. The Rollover MQM along with the free/complementary upgrades clearly made Delta my carrier of choice for the rest of the year (see previous post regarding Delta as the best for coast to coast travel). I would be surprised if United or American follows this promotion as they have most of the corporate customers locked into corporate travel plans/accounts such as 25 to 30% discount plan.

Marriott launched their Elite Rollover Nights program in late spring and none of the major hotel chains followed. Marriott’s move to offer Elite Rollover Nights doesn’t surprise me since they require 75 actual nights to obtain Platinum status which means Elite rollover doesn’t begin until your 76th night. With 50 to 60 nights at other hotels like SPG, Hilton respectively, you’d be at their highest level.

Delta is extremely generous with its rollover plan. You can practically begin rolling over miles after making silver – or your 25,001st medallion mile. For example, if you earned 45 MQMs this year – 20,000 MQM more than the Silver Medallion requirement – the 20,000 MQMs will automatically roll over to next year’s balance. This means for 2010, you will only need to get 5,000 MQM to get Silver Medallion. This is actually a great perk as Delta didn’t devalue its mileage program with the Double/Triple MQM scam (see previous post) – I only earned 1 double MQM from all my trips.

Captain G will go on record to endorse Delta despite the fact that Delta JFK’s customer service should all be overhauled (see previous post).