delta to no longer award elite qualiflying miles for korean airline flights.

i'm not a big collector of delta's skymiles. i have an account only because i took a flight on malaysia airlines and china eastern airlines one time and needed a place to park those miles in an account with a generous expiration policy (i.e., supposedly never). i haven't used the program enough to know how good or bad the program is. however, i've read so much about their elite program and how unfriendly it has become.

earlier this year, delta added a new requirement for earning elite status in their program. starting in 2013 for the 2014 program year, they added the concept of medallion qualifying dollars. for american residents, one would need to spend $5,000 a year on delta airlines in order to earn gold status in addition to the previous qualifying segment/qualifying point requirements. this spend includes only base fares and fuel surcharges, not government imposed taxes (which can be quite bulky on international and even canadian destinations).

what made things even more restrictive was that even though alliance partner flights would earn qualifying segments or miles, they would not qualify for the qualifying dollar amounts unless they were on delta-marketed flights. and if you bought a code-share version of a delta flight (e.g., sitting in a delta aircraft but on an alaska airlines flight number), it would not count. so unless that alaska airlines flight you were taking was a code-share with delta, and you bought the DL flight number rather than the AS flight number, then that wouldn't count towards your qualification.

and today, they made it worse.

i (and i'm sure everyone else) received an e-mail from delta this morning telling me about "future mileage earning on partner flights". what they've done is that they've simplified their earning chart. the simplification of the chart isn't a bad thing. it makes it easier to know what you may or may not receive in terms of qualifying points on partner airlines.

they've divided up the chart into four sections:

1. airlines where you will always earn full qualifying points and class of service bonuses
2. airlines where you will earn less than 100% qualifying miles but will earn class of service bonuses
3. airlines where you will earn less than 100% qualifying miles and no class of service bonus
4. airlines where you will not earn qualifying miles nor class of service bonuses

the most surprising was that korean airlines, a full fledged member of the skyteam alliance, no longer earns qualifying points on delta. this kind of goes against the whole point of having an alliance in the first place. the alliance is all about reciprocity -- korean airlines recognizes the benefits of delta's elite members with the understanding that delta will recognize the benefits of korean's elite members. and likewise with earning, korean allows prized status miles to be earned by flying other airlines, with the understanding that other airlines will allow prized status mile accumulation to be earned on korean flights. a win-win situation for everyone. but starting september 1, 2013, this will no longer be the case.

the additional spend requirements in addition to the fewer partners with which to earn qualifying points on will make delta just a little bit harder to earn status with.

why is this important?
concepts tend to be infectious. in the last few months, when one american airline increased their change fees, all of the other american legacy carriers followed suit. when one airline wanted to add checked baggage fees, everyone followed suit. and so the worry is what will happen if air canada or other airlines were to add very restrictive minimum spend requirements per year? or what if various members of the star alliance no longer recognize and reward travel on other members of the star alliance? for an infrequent flyer like myself who obtains status in non-traditional ways, changes like these certainly seem scary. i'll be keeping an eye out over the next few years to see what happens.