I’ve decided to put a very early Tuesday post out this week. In fact, it’s still Monday here on the west coast. But since Delta took the time to brief me about their 2010 SkyMiles changes, I figured I’d put my post out the second they lifted the embargo. So here we are.

Besides adding a new Diamond tier for super cool, awesome frequent fliers (comes with knee pads to give to customer service employees to use when kissing your butt), they’ve done something pretty interesting. They’ve become the AT&T of the airline industry by adding rollover elite qualifying miles.

So how does the rollover game work? Well, any miles you fly above and beyond the threshold for elite qualification, you get to use to qualify the following year. For example, let’s say you flew 40,000 miles in 2010 – not quite the 50,000 you need for Gold status, but far more than the 25,000 you’ll need for Silver. With other airlines, those 15,000 extra miles don’t do anything for your elite status, but now Delta’s program lets you start off your 2011 qualification efforts with 15,000 miles in the bank.

This only works if you reach that 25,000 level. In other words, if you had a total of 10,000 elite qualifying miles in 2010 (which gets you absolutely nothing), you can’t carry those over to 2011 with the hope that after a couple years you’ll eventually reach Silver. That’s smart for Delta to do that, because otherwise they’d end up with way too many Silver members and that dilutes the benefits for those who actually are frequent fliers.

This development makes for some interesting choices for frequent fliers. Currently, when frequent fliers hit the highest mileage threshold that they expect to be able to meet, they often shift their other travel to other airlines in order to try to qualify in other programs. Now, the higher mileage earning level and the ability to roll those miles over makes for a very compelling reason to keep flying Delta instead. Very interesting move on Delta’s part. I like it.

But these aren’t the only changes coming in 2010. Looking through the list that Delta sent me, SkyMiles members don’t seem to be losing anything this year. It’s still a 24 month mileage expiration policy, upgrades are still free for elites within North America and northern South America, and everyone still gets 500 miles minimum on every flight. There are, however, a few new things this year besides the rollover.

• Gold, Platinum, and Diamond elites will now get complimentary upgrades on award tickets as well as on paid tickets. (I believe Northwest already had this benefit.)




• Gold, Platinum, and Diamond elites will have fees waived to book through the phone reservations line. (Another Northwest benefit.)




• Platinum members get to choose one of the following – 4 systemwide upgrades (less than last year’s 6, but now redeemable on day of departure), 20,000 bonus miles, Gift of Silver elite status to a friend, 4 Sky Club day passes, Travel/retail gift cards




• Diamond members get to choose one of the following – 6 systemwide upgrades (now redeemable on day of departure), 25,000 bonus miles, Gift of Gold elite status to a friend, 6 Sky Club day passes (which would be a dumb choice since they get complimentary membership), Travel/retail gift cards

So, it’s another day of good news for frequent flier mileage junkies. I’m happy to see Delta incorporating some of the benefits Northwest frequent fliers were already enjoying, and I think this rollover idea is pretty cool. Nice work.

This week is looking like a good week for frequent fliers. I’ve got some big news from another program tomorrow, but today, United shocked the world by actually removing a fee. Now last minute booking fees from Mileage Plus awards are gone, and that’s certainly worthy of a gold star.

Most airlines have added these obnoxious fees in the last couple of years. With United, you had to pay $100 extra if you booked your award travel within a week of departure and $75 extra if you booked between one week and three weeks of your trip. Why did they implement these fees? It certainly had nothing to do with an extra cost incurred by last minute bookings. No, it was simply a way to screw people out of money and devalue awards further.

Though I wasn’t in on the conversation, I think I can figure out how these fees came to be in the first place. Everyone knows that last minute fares are more expensive, so they probably thought they could charge a last minute fee and not push people away from using their miles because it was still a lot cheaper than buying a ticket. They could get people to burn miles and they could make a little extra cash on the deal. Sounded great, but it was absolutely distasteful from a customer perspective.

I imagine this recent change was thanks to the wonders of ancillary revenue. United has now learned it can make a fair amount of money from just getting people onboard. Bag fees and buy-on-board are just a couple ways that they can make money on someone who is flying on a free ticket. And since demand has been severely depressed lately, they just want to get people to fill those empty seats.

My guess is that the reduction of last minute fares on many airlines has meant that people just weren’t using their miles very much for last minute travel. I helped some friends a couple weeks ago who needed to fly from LA to Indianapolis that afternoon for an emergency. They asked about using miles, but once I told them about the fee (which is actually higher on other airlines), they opted to buy a $250 one way fare on US Airways instead.

In that case, United had seats available but it lost out because of the fee. That meant no bag revenue, no chance to sell food, etc. So I think the gamble here is that the elimination of the fee will just get people onboard, and that’s great news for customers.

Let’s all celebrate the death of one of the more obnoxious fees out there, and for once, let’s give United some credit for doing something that’s customer friendly.

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