In short, Delta SkyMiles is the rewards currency you earn and spend to book award flights on Delta and its partners, while MQMs help you earn elite status with Delta but cannot be redeemed for flights.
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Can you earn Delta MQMs without flying? Yes, both the personal and business version of the Delta Platinum card and Delta Reserve card offer a Status Boost feature that allows you to earn MQMs for meeting annual spending thresholds within a calendar year.
MQMs are Medallion Qualifying Miles. You earn these based on how far you fly and the fare class of your ticket. With regular economy class tickets, you earn 1 MQM per mile flown. For higher classes, it may be 1.5 or 2 MQMs per mile flown.
The MQM bonus on the Delta Reserve card and Delta Reserve Business card offers more potential. Currently, you can earn 15,000 MQMs after spending $30,000 in a year, up to 4 times per year. With 1 of these cards, you can earn 60,000 MQMs after spending a total of $120,000 per year.
Buy Medallion qualification milesThe simplest but most expensive way to rack up a few thousand extra MQMs quickly is simply to buy them from the airline. You may be able to buy MQMs from Delta through its Elevate Your Status program at the end of the year.
Basic Economy tickets purchased on or after December 9, 2021 for flights departing on or after January 1, 2022, are not eligible to earn miles in the SkyMiles Program or earn credit towards Medallion Status (meaning not eligible for MQM, MQS or MQD earn).
Full fare First and Business Class tickets (F, J fares) are eligible for a 100% MQM bonus. Discounted First, Delta Premium Select, Business, and Premium Main Cabin tickets (P, A, G, C, D, I, Z, Y, and B fares) are eligible for a 50% MQM bonus.
Only MQMs roll over, not Medallion Qualifying Dollars (MQDs). That means you'll need to spend the full amount with Delta in 2023 to earn status again – and after a recent increase, those spending requirements are even higher for all but Silver status.
Medallion status benefits. All Medallion tiers offer priority boarding and check-in, and all except Silver get priority security and baggage access. All tiers also receive complimentary seat upgrade eligibility, free checked bags and bonus SkyMiles, with higher tiers offering correspondingly greater benefits.
These are different than miles earned for award travel which are based on ticket price and Medallion status level. Delta SkyMiles don't expire, but MQMs reset at the beginning of each year.
You'll only roll over additional MQMs if you earned at least Silver Medallion status last year for 2023. If not, you reset back to zero. Trying to figure out how many Delta MQMs you'll roll over? Subtract the number of MQMs required to earn your current level of status from how many MQMs you earned in 2022.
At airports which do not have a dedicated Silver Medallion check-in lane, Silver Medallion Members are permitted to use the Sky Priority check-in lane.
So Delta's highest public loyalty tier is in the neighborhood of only . 02% of their flyers. But by flying at least an order of magnitude more than everybody else, we use up 2-3% of their seat miles. So on any given plane you'd expect an average of 0-9 Diamonds, to a first approximation.
The Amex Platinum card does not give you automatic Delta Air Lines status, nor does it give you a pathway to earn status with Delta. There are really only 2 Delta-related benefits on the Amex Platinum card. The first is access to Delta Sky Clubs while traveling on a Delta Air Lines flight.
But the pattern is clear: It always takes a few weeks, maybe even a month for these rollover Delta MQMs to hit your account. Officially, Delta says to give it until the end of the month for these Medallion Qualifying Miles to get deposited for 2023. But in practice, it typically takes just a few weeks.
A Medallion Member and one traveling companion may both enjoy a Complimentary Upgrade when traveling on Delta and Delta Connection carriers, as long as that companion is a General SkyMiles Member, Medallion Member, or partner airline elite member*, and traveling on the same flight in the same reservation.