Delta’s now offering to sell people elite qualifying miles (medallion qualifying miles, whatever…) to people for fixed prices- up to 10K MQM can be bought in this way. Most people wouldn’t really be happy, as it further inflates the elite pools that are already pretty bloated due to the influx of Northwest Platinums from the status match a couple of years ago, and all the credit card MQMs on offer, but first let’s take a look at the pricing…
| MQM Price | # of MQMs | Sample Roundtrip MQMs |
| $295 | 2,500 | Atlanta/Albuquerque |
| $495 | 5,000 | Minneapolis/Anchorage |
| $695 | 7,500 | New York/Frankfurt |
| $895 | 10,000 | Portland/Amsterdam |
Now even at the cheapest pricing option, 9 cents per medallion qualifying mile is a lot to pay, considering that even in December most mileage runs can be had for 5-6 cents per MQM- and that’s not considering the RDMs one would forgo for buying miles instead of mileage running. A 5,000 mile mileage run for $300 would net 11250 RDM’s for a Diamond, which if valued at 2 cents per mile is $250 worth of RDM’s- thus you’re actually only paying $50 for the EQM’s. Factor in SkyClub access, complimentary upgrades etc. and paying $895 not to fly suddenly sounds like a very bad option.
Can’t fault Delta though, as the number of upgrades are finite and MQMs have no value in redemption terms, this is literally a pass to print money. But there should be no reason why one would “take advantage” of this offer.
Roland is an student, travel blogger, award travel expert and frequent flyer consultant based in Sydney, Australia. He runs an award travel and mileage run consulting service, which can be found at Flight Concierge and regularly posts on FlyerTalk under the handle "belfordrocks".
