When Delta SkyMiles recently announced changes to their program effective Jan. 1, 2015, they stated that new award charts would be coming in the fourth quarter of 2014, with information on new redemption tiers raising the current three-tier award chart up to five tiers. Either Delta is bent in exceeding expectations for their members, or they realized that the message of the change to SkyMiles needed substance—and if there is one thing that members of any travel loyalty program fully love to analyze (witness the recent award changes with the United MileagePlus program) is award charts—whether it be airline or hotels.
SO, what’s a program to do? Get it out and get it out early. The new award chart is posted HERE
The headline reads: New Award Charts keep lowest price points the same, 95 percent of pricing changes are decreasing.
That’s the headline. The real impact will be seen in the actual redemption, from statistics and from member feedback in the popular court of public opinion. In the most recent year (2013) the award redemption for United MileagePlus was 7.9% in revenue passenger miles, Delta trailed at 7.3% in revenue passenger miles and both were well back of the industry leader in award redemption, Southwest Rapid Rewards at 9.5% in revenue passenger miles. In actual redemption statistics, Southwest Rapid Rewards awarded 5.4 million flight awards in 2013 while United handed out 5.0 million flight awards and Delta was in the range of 4.7 million flight awards. We’ll use this benchmark in 2016 when we will be able to measure the effect that the new award chart had on SkyMiles award redemptions.
We do know we were incorrect in trying to guess where the new award chart would be going. We predicted European mid-level coach awards would be 70,000 and 100,000 (the two new “filler” levels) but a quick look sees awards to Europe in coach at 60,000 – 75,000 – 95,000 – 110,000 – 130,000. We were off by 5,000 miles in our guess—and that means a lot to anyone collecting and earning SkyMiles.
Interesting Take: In our prior posts, we made mention of the change being like “putting wings on a hotel program.” Further proof of this is in how Delta is rebranding their award tiers. Long has been the domination of “Saver” and “Peak” with the eerie wasteland of Standard awards included, Delta again appears to take a page right out of the hotel guide to award redemption by renaming their award tiers “Levels”. Familiar terminology and we hope, familiar results, as we rarely see anyone complain about award availability from hotel programs. We guess we’ll all be saying … “What level R U on for that award?“
Final Thoughts: With just two of approximately 90 different award levels changing with the new award charts, there’s hope—a lot of hope. But charts don’t make happy members, redemption success stories do. Delta, your clock has just started, albeit seven months early.
We’ll do a more in-depth look at these award levels once they are fully released.
Isn’t this 9 months early, not 7?
No, they said they would be releasing the new award charts in the forth quarter … which starts on Oct. 1. March to October is seven months. Charts … not the actual possibility of redeeming an award. Good catch, love that you are reading.
I fell for their spin — “more than nine months in advance”!
But as we say, all the charts in the world don’t really mean a thing if you don’t have the redemption ring. 9 months? Sounds like a “delivery date” to us!
Should be interesting to see how this plays out
Yes it will. On such a big stage with what Delta has been able to achieve on the corporate side, they really can’t “afford” to mess this one up with is why there’s likely more to the upside than the downside though we’ll have to make sure the signal-to-noise filters are working.