It’s no secret that I’m a Delta mileage fiend. I’ll fly an extra segment here and there to accumulate the miles, I’ll fly into Dallas and drive 3 hours to Abilene rather than take American Airlines. It’s a game to me.
This year, Delta is starting Rollover Miles. Anything over a tier that you accumulate is “credited” to your status for the following year. And it’s working out quite well for me.
Here are Delta’s tiers:
- Silver – 25,000 miles
- Gold – 50,000 miles
- Platinum – 75,000 miles
- Diamond – 125,000 miles (*New in 2010!*)
I reallllllllllly wanted to hit Diamond last year, and could have, but I decided to play around a little. I stopped at 115,000 miles on Delta, leaving me 10K short of Diamond BUT 40,000 ahead of Platinum.
My current Platinum status is good through February 28, 2011. So I’ve got many free upgrades in my future. Rather than go to Diamond and then risk having nothing beyond ( I did 5 international trips in 2009, and don’t think I’ll do as many in the coming years), I decided to pull up short and use rollover miles to extend my elite status days.
So here’s the math: 115,158 – 75,000 = 40,158 “rollover miles” credited towards my 2010 accumulation. I’ve flown 1,632 miles this year on 3 segments, putting me at 41,790 qualification miles YTD.
After next week, I’ll have flown 10,000 miles in January. So I’ll be Gold Status already (50K), which would cover me from March 1, 2011 – Feb 28, 2012. Then after my international trip in February, I’ll accumulate 25,000 miles and be to Platinum status by the middle of the month, giving me my current Platinum status through Feb 28, 2012.
So to reach Diamond Status (which begins as soon as you hit the tier and carries through Feb 28, 2012), I’ll just need to fly 50K more miles in 2010. No problem.
So there are 2 scenarios:
- Fly 10,000 extra miles in 2009, get to 125,000 and have Diamond status until Feb 2011. Start from 0 miles and hopefully fly 75,000 miles to get Platinum through Feb 2012.
- Stop at 115K, take the rollover miles, use it as a bounce to headstart for 2010. Potentially have Diamond starting by June 2010 and through Feb 2012. Use Rollover miles over 125K towards 2013.
I chose #2. 
Wow something new to admire about Brad J Ward. TONS of miles! I’m also pumped about rollover miles…especially since I’m about to be downgraded to Silver (how common can you get!?) and now have a headstart on my 2010 MQM. I do believe living in Atlanta makes it tougher because my segments don’t pile up like they did when I had layovers on every trip. PS -Sky club? can you ever go without that now that you’ve had it?!
Haha! We just cashed in 440,000 miles for vacations this year. Love it!
You definitely miss out by living in ATL. Nearly every one of my flights out of IND go to Cincinnati, Memphis, or Detroit. They’re all under 1 hour, but I get 500 minimum + bonus = 625 miles for a quick stop, then on from there.
Coming back from overseas one time, I went through LAX to MEM to IND rather than DTW to IND. Got a lot more miles, and arrived 17 minutes later than the DTW-IND segment.
Sky Club – Awesome. We call it Cloud Club, in honor of the crappy bar at the top of our hotel at NACAC this year.
It was called Cloud Club and offered free drinks from 5-7pm, haha!
Just one international trip in ‘09 for me, but I got to Silver this year by taking one last segment run on Dec. 30. Guess I could have rolled it over, but it was fun. I got to be in Cleveland, Cincinatti and St. Louis all in one afternoon.
Good luck on the push to Diamond!