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Delta Skymiles Rollover Miles

Author: Bradjward | Posted: January 21, 2010 4

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.

Screen shot 2010-01-21 at 8.42.00 AM

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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. :)