My Year-End Strategy for Reaching Top-Tier Delta Diamond Medallion Status

It’s that time of the year again. The leaves are turning, Halloween is approaching, and frequent flyers have begun asking themselves what to do to keep their status for one more year.

On December 31, the deadline for status-eligible activity expires for most airlines. In my case, I’m in a situation familiar to many Delta Air Lines flyers: close to the next tier of Medallion status, but not close enough that the flying or credit-card spending I can expect for the rest of the year would get me there organically.

Specifically, I am 4,500 Medallion Qualification Dollars away from keeping Diamond Medallion status until January 31, 2026. And I really want to hit the 28,000 MQD threshold that means one more year of Delta’s top published status, because I value highly the benefits it gets me as a frequent flyer on Delta and its partners in the SkyTeam alliance. So, here’s what I’m doing to make Delta Diamond Medallion for another year, and how you can use a similar strategy.

Is Elite Status Worth It Anymore?

Over the past year, the concept that airline loyalty is overrated has made inroads in the points and miles community. It’s a position that makes sense for many people. But with a tally of almost 100,000 miles flown on average per year, I know that I can get value from being loyal to one airline; I’ll explain why in this article.

Meanwhile, knowing I would not get those 4,500 MQDs from spending on certain Delta American Express cards, there was only one thing I could do to rack up enough MQDs: fly.

Partner Airlines to the Rescue

When flying Delta, 1 dollar spent on airfare normally equals 1 MQD. So, to get those 4,500 MQDs I would have to spend at least $4,500 on flights — quite a bit more, in fact, because taxes and fees don’t count as MQDs.

That’s a lot of money, but the way around this is by spending on flights with partner airlines, which earns MQDs as a percentage of distance flown.

Flying coach class on partner airlines isn’t very lucrative in terms of MQDs, though, since you get at most 20% of the distance as MQDs, according to Delta’s partner earnings chart. To get to my goal, I would have to fly 22,500 miles in economy. Not an attractive prospect.

What about premium economy? I looked at options on Google Flights from my base in New York City. My goal was a destination with a round-trip distance of at least 18,000 miles, since premium economy typically earns 25% of distance as MQDs — right at the 4,500 number I needed.

Make Sure You’re Not Booking on Delta

I found quite a few flights in premium economy on Virgin Atlantic, KLM and Air France to Indian destinations via their European hubs. They were very attractive, yielding more than 4,000 MQDs for about $1,800 in airfare. But, besides landing me a little short of the 4,500 MQD goal, those relatively cheap fares were available only if booking on the Delta site.

And booking on Delta.com or the Delta app is exactly what you should not do when trying to maximize MQDs using the distance-flown trick.

That’s because if you book on Delta, regardless of the airline you fly on, you earn MQDs at the usual Delta rate. The $1,783 ticket I was looking at would have given me 1,783 MQDs at best. No dice. I would have to book on a partner airline’s site in order to make this work.

When you do book a flight on a partner airline’s site in order to earn Delta MQDs, make sure the frequent flyer number you are entering is your Delta SkyMiles number, not the number of the account you may have with the partner airline. That’s because you want to earn Delta SkyMiles and MQDs for your flights, not the partner airline’s miles.

Booking a Partner Award Flight

I then looked at Aeromexico, which does not offer premium economy, but often has cheap business-class fares from the U.S. or Canada to deep South America. In other words, I’ll get lots of distance MQDs. But I found nothing affordable on my available dates.

How about SkyTeam partner, Virgin Atlantic, but in business class? I knew from experience that the airline sometimes offers decent fares in its Upper Class to South Africa or India. And that’s where I hit the jackpot.

On Google Flights, I found a $2,570 trip in biz to Bengaluru via London. The routing would be New York JFK to Bengaluru (BLR) via London Heathrow (LHR) outbound on Virgin Atlantic, with a return from Bengaluru to Mumbai (BOM) on Indian carrier IndiGo, then from BOM to to JFK via LHR on Virgin.

During booking, I took note of the fare class code, which was Z. That means “discounted business class.”

According to the Delta partner earnings chart, Z class on Virgin Atlantic earns 30% of distance flown as MQDs. Given the 16,000 miles of my itinerary, it would be perfect for hitting my goal.

Before finalizing the booking I headed to Qualifying Miles to calculate precisely what I would earn. I didn’t count the Bengaluru to Mumbai segment, because IndiGo flights booked on Virgin do not earn Delta qualifying dollars. I might earn Virgin points on that IndiGo flight instead, but I can think about that part later.

The site told me I would earn 4,915 MQDs, enough for my purposes and then some, easily vaulting my balance past the 28,000 MQD threshold for Diamond Medallion.

Factor the Points You Earn in the Overall Cost

To sweeten the deal, the 52,418 redeemable SkyMiles I would earn are worth a cool $629 at our valuations. I would also book the flights with the Chase Sapphire Reserve^® Card, which earns 3x points per dollar spent on travel, or another 7,710 Ultimate Rewards points. That’s worth another $154 for future travel.

So, considering the value of the points and miles I’d get, this flight was going to cost me $1,787. After making those considerations, I pulled the trigger on the purchase, confident that I had come to a screamingly low figure for a business-class roundtrip from New York to India. I would effectively be paying around 10 cents per mile. In dollars-per-distance terms, that’s 3 times cheaper than even the New York subway, which takes me 10 miles from my home in Brooklyn to Midtown Manhattan for a $2.90 fare.

Why I Value Delta Diamond Medallion Status

Why am I doing all this, though?

The short answer is that it’s worth it. According to our valuations, Delta Diamond status can be worth approximately $7,000, but you can get more than that in benefits if you fly really often.

For me, the real attraction of Diamond status is Delta’s Global Upgrade Certificates, which are not available at lower Medallion tiers. Those are part of the benefits you can select when you make Diamond (up to 4 Global Upgrade Certificates per Medallion year) and allow a 1-cabin upgrade in advance, on any cash or award ticket. So you can book Premium Select and bump yourself up — if there’s upgrade space available — to Delta One business class, for example.

That’s a fantastic benefit to have. Thanks to those certificates, my wife and I have flown from the U.S. to Europe in flat-bed biz class twice this year, paying the much lower Premium Select fare.

Diamond status is also very useful for automatic (and free) upgrades on Delta’s domestic, Caribbean, Central America and Canada flights.

I have taken 21 of those flights on Delta so far in 2024, and on 13 of them I have been upgraded to first class, a remarkable 62% of the time.

It’s true that I have the Delta SkyMiles^® Reserve American Express Card, which may have helped since it acts as tie breaker for upgrades between passengers with the same status and fare paid. But card or no card, I wouldn’t have hit those numbers without Diamond status.

Final Thoughts

Do not overextend yourself chasing airline status. Going for high-tier Delta status makes sense for me because I fly a lot for work and leisure, and Delta and its partners in the SkyTeam alliance take me where I want to go.

If you are a more casual flyer, this level of loyalty is probably not a good idea. You might be better off with transferable credit card points, using those to book flights, whether in premium classes or economy.

But if Delta loyalty makes sense for you, and you need Delta MQDs quick before the year ends, the solution detailed in this article is a good way to rack up a bunch in a hurry — and maybe take the opportunity to visit a new city or country in in the process.