How To Earn Bonus MQMs With Status Boost on Delta Amex Cards [2023]

Medallion Qualification Miles, or MQMs, is a term used by Delta Air Lines to describe 1 of the requirements to earn Delta SkyMiles Medallion elite status. If you’re a frequent Delta flyer, you’ve likely heard of MQMs and using credit cards to get an MQM bonus.

If you’re interested in earning Delta elite status but can’t seem to qualify through flying alone, we’ll guide you through using Delta credit cards to boost your MQM earnings so you can accelerate your path to elite status!

How To Earn Delta SkyMiles Medallion Status

There are 4 major tiers of Delta SkyMiles Medallion status and each level has a different set of requirements that you must meet to achieve that status.

To qualify for Delta SkyMiles Medallion status, you must satisfy 2 out of the 3 following requirements:

• Medallion Qualification Miles (MQMs) 
• Medallion Qualification Segments (MQSs)
• Medallion Qualification Dollars (MQDs)

MQM-earning is determined by how far you fly and what kind of fare you purchased, while MQS-earning is determined by how many segments you fly and what kind of fare you purchased.

Lastly, MQD-earning is determined by how much money you’ve spent on Delta airfare (taxes and fees, including fuel surcharges, are excluded). MQDs are the only type of elite qualification requirement that offers a waiver for its requirements.

To get Delta elite status, you’ll need to earn a certain amount of MQMs or MQSs, as well as a specific amount of MQDs. Below are the requirements for each status level:

If you have an eligible co-branded Delta card from American Express, you can get an MQD waiver that waives the ordinary MQD requirement to qualify for Medallion elite status if you make a minimum amount of purchases every year on your credit card.

In this case, you will earn an MQD waiver for Silver, Gold, and Platinum Medallion status if you spend at least $25,000 in purchases per calendar year on any of the following cards:

• Delta SkyMiles^® Platinum American Express Card
• Delta SkyMiles^® Platinum Business American Express Card
• Delta SkyMiles^® Reserve American Express Card
• Delta SkyMiles^® Reserve Business American Express Card

You can also earn an MQD waiver for top-tier Diamond Medallion status, but you’ll need to spend at least $250,000 in purchases per calendar year on Delta Platinum-branded or Delta Reserve-branded credit cards.

How To Earn Delta MQMs

There are 2 ways to earn Delta MQMs:

1. Flying with Delta or an eligible partner airline
2. Credit card spending on a Delta Amex co-branded card

Assuming you’re not flying constantly, you’re probably going to be looking for a way to earn Delta MQMs while you’re not traveling. The best way to do so is through credit card spending!

Using the Delta Platinum Card To Earn MQMs Via Status Boost

With either the Delta Platinum card or Delta Platinum Business card, you can earn 10,000 MQMs for every $25,000 spent on your credit card, up to 2 times per year.

So if you just have 1 of these cards, you’d be able to earn up to 20,000 MQMs by spending $50,000 per year.

If you have both the Delta Platinum card and Delta Platinum Business card, you could double up and earn up to 40,000 MQMs by spending $50,000 on each card per year.

Using the Delta Reserve Card To Earn MQMs Via Status Boost

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. And with both of these cards, you can earn a total of 120,000 MQMs after spending $120,000 on each card per year (for a total of $240,000 in spend).

Is It Worth It?

Using Delta credit cards to earn MQMs is totally worth it for the right customer. But the right customer has to be flying regularly on Delta to make the effort worth it. That’s because there’s an opportunity cost to putting credit card spending on your Delta credit cards. We value Delta SkyMiles at 1.2 cents each, and there are definitely other types of points and miles that make more sense to accumulate.

For example, you can generally only earn 3x Delta SkyMiles on Delta flight purchases, which results in a return on spending of around 3.6%. Meanwhile, if you have The Platinum Card^® from American Express, your Delta flight purchases could earn 5x Membership Rewards points, which results in a return on spending of around 11%, since we value Membership Rewards points at 2.2 cents each.

That’s a dramatic increase in the amount of rewards you could be earning. In fact, if you spend $5,000 per year on Delta flights, you’d only be getting back $180 worth of Delta SkyMiles with the Delta Reserve card. But if you spent that same amount on the Amex Platinum card, you’d be getting back $550 worth of Amex Membership Rewards points!

The biggest value with Delta SkyMiles Medallion status is the complimentary upgrades, and if you’re only flying Delta a couple of times per year on short flights, it’s probably not worth chasing top-tier elite status and losing out on other credit card rewards.

But if you’re on a Delta flight every other week, it could absolutely be worth it to spend a lot on Delta credit cards. Additionally, if you’re someone who highly values Delta elite status, or if you need an extra bump of MQMs to get to the next level of status, then spending on a Delta credit card can make sense.

However, you shouldn’t spend more than you normally would just to earn some bonus MQMs — just use your Delta card as you normally would for everyday purchases and try to hit the spending requirement organically.

Note that you can get almost all the way to Diamond Medallion status just by having both the Delta Reserve card and Delta Reserve Business card and spending $120,000 on each card every year. That’s 120,000 MQMs earned! If you also have the Delta Platinum card as well and also spend $25,000 on the Delta Platinum card, you’ll earn another 10,000 MQMs, bringing up your grand total to 130,000 MQMs earned. You’ll also have earned the Diamond Medallion MQD waiver having spend a total of $265,000 across all of your Delta credit cards!

Final Thoughts

One of the benefits of the Delta Platinum-branded and Delta Reserve-branded cards from Amex is the ability to potentially spend your way to top-tier Delta SkyMiles Medallion elite status.

We value Delta Diamond Medallion status at around $7,000, but you can certainly get more or less value based on your own circumstances.

Each of the Delta Platinum-branded cards can earn you up to 10,000 MQMs after spending $25,000 in a calendar year (up to 2 times per year), while each of the Delta Reserve-branded cards can earn you up to 15,000 MQMs after spending $30,000 in a calendar year (up to 4 times per year).

For rates and fees of the Delta SkyMiles^® Platinum American Express Card, click here.
For rates and fees of the Delta SkyMiles^® Platinum Business American Express Card, click here.
For rates and fees of Delta SkyMiles^® Reserve American Express Card, click here.
For rates and fees for the Delta SkyMiles^® Reserve Business American Express Card, click here.
For rates and fees of The Platinum Card^® from American Express, click here.