You earn 1 MQD for every dollar you spend on Delta flights. This includes the fare and airline fees, but not taxes and government fees. MQMs are Medallion Qualifying Miles. You earn these based on how far you fly and the fare class of your ticket.
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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.
Those with the Delta Platinum card or Delta SkyMiles® Platinum Business American Express Card can earn 10,000 Medallion Qualification Miles (MQMs) after spending $25,000 in purchases on your card in a calendar year, up to 2 times per year.
Delta miles and Medallion® Qualification Miles (MQMs) are both very valuable, but there's a key difference! MQMs have no actual value and are only used to track elite status with Delta. Delta miles and MQMs can NOT be combined. You can NOT use MQMs for award tickets or to Pay With Miles.
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.
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.
Further, you can spend $25,000 on either the Delta Platinum or Delta Reserve cards to earn an MQD waiver for Silver, Gold and Platinum status. Or, you can spend $250,000 for a Diamond MQD waiver. This completely waives the MQD requirement, meaning you only need to meet the MQS or MQM requirement to earn status.
As a Gold Medallion elite, you get some decent mid-range benefits when flying Delta and its SkyTeam partners, including free checked bags, higher rewards earning rates and unlimited complimentary upgrades, to name a few.
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.
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.
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).
To earn Delta Diamond you must fly 125,000 miles a year (known as Medallion Qualifying Miles) or fly 140 segments a year (known as Medallion Qualifying Segments), and then also spend either $20,000 a year (known as Medallion Qualification Dollars) or participate in a waiver.
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 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.
100,000 Delta miles are worth an average of $1,120, according to WalletHub data. You will get the best value for your Delta miles if you use them for flights booked through Delta, though there are a few other redemption options to choose from.