Yesterday morning I posted that Delta was changing to a revenue based model. A similar concept that is currently in place for Southwest, JetBlue, and Virgin America. However, in addition to this new model, Delta will also be changing the redemption options come January 1, 2015.
While the award structure will not be announced until later this year, we are told that there will be a five-tier structure. They say this will “give a wider variety of Awards and improve overall availability at the lowest price points.” For those that like to redeem for US domestic tickets, luckily the 25,000 point option will remain the same – so they say. I am personally not confident that this change will be in the consumers favor as they are marketing it. With most airline changes these days they typically come with a massive devaluation. I guess only time will tell.
On the positive side though, Delta will start to allow one-way awards. This is huge as it will allow more flexibility to fly somewhere on one airline and home on another. It will also allow miles + cash options, but that chart is not yet available.
I’ll be watching this closely to see how the details unfold…
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How will starwood earning be with delta that now it has changed, dosent starwood give per mile flown?
@Mike – Great question. Unfortunately they haven’t given any indication how that partnership will work come Jan 1, 2015.
DL has always had a somewhat “cash and points” option – called “Pay with Miles” if you have any of their credit cards you could redeem at 1cent per mile against any fare for any portion of the fare. Though, unless you were doing that on a F ticket the trip was not mileage-accuring eligible.
I agree – we’ll see what these 5 “tiers” are – personally I feel like it won’t be anything good. If you look at United or American, they have the “normal” tier (with an intra-US roundtrip at 25,000 miles) and then they have more expensive tiers.
I kind of get the feeling that 1 of the 5 tiers will be good and the other 4 will be ones that no self-respecting travel hacker will ever want to use…