Life After Delta Diamond: All MQD Thresholds Above Diamond

It’s not heavily publicized, but there are MQD thresholds where you can earn extra benefits after earning Delta Diamond status.

Delta Diamond Medallion status takes $28,000 MQDs

Just a quick refresher on how to earn status with Delta: you’ll need to collect a base amount of MQD in a given calendar year. MQD is Delta’s elite status miles based on the amount of pre-tax money spent on tickets, Delta SkyMiles spent on Delta award tickets, and on other qualifying activity.

Silver Medallion status requires $5,000 MQDs
Gold Medallion status requires $10,000 MQDs
Platinum Medallion status requires $15,000 MQDs
Diamond Medallion status requires $28,000 MQDs
Delta 360 status requires an unpublished amount of MQDs

There’s quite a large jump in required MQD, which reflects both how they want to preserve the exclusivity of the status and also what their top customers spend annually.

Delta offers Choice Benefits for both Platinum and Diamond Medallions

As an extra thank you to their loyal customers, Delta offers Choice Benefits for Platinum and Diamond Medallions.

Platinum members get one of the following:

Four Regional Upgrade Certificates (RUCs)
A $400 statement credit if they have a Delta Platinum or Reserve card
6,000 Starbucks Stars
$1,000 MQD bonus for the next Medallion Year
Gift Silver Medallion Status to two recipients
30,000 bonus miles (for yourself or gifted to others)
A $400 credit for a Delta Vacations package
$250 contribution towards sustainable aviation fuel
$300 Delta travel voucher
$1,500 Wheels Up credit

Diamond members get three of the following:

Upgrade certificates (one of the following):
- Eight RUCs
- Four Global Upgrade Certificates (GUCs)
- Two GUCs and four RUCs
A $700 statement credit if they have a Delta Platinum or Reserve card
6,000 Starbucks Stars
Delta Sky Club membership (one of the following):
- One Executive membership (requires all three Choice Benefits)
- One Individual membership (requires two Choice Benefits)
$2,000 MQD bonus for the next Medallion Year
Gift Gold Medallion Status to two recipients
35,000 bonus miles (for yourself or gifted to others)
A $500 credit for a Delta Vacations package
$250 contribution towards sustainable aviation fuel
$350 Delta travel voucher
$2,000 Wheels Up credit

As a reminder, Diamond members will also end up able to choose a Platinum option on top of the three they get for Diamond. The Diamond Choice Benefits don’t replace the Platinum Benefits.

Earn bonus Delta Diamond Choice Benefits after hitting $28,000 MQDs

New for the 2026 elite qualification year (based on MQD earned in 2025), you can earn extra Diamond Choice Benefits after earning Delta Diamond Medallion status. Naturally, the Delta site is scant on details.

Shortly after earning Delta Diamond status, you’ll see the following promotion appear in your SkyMiles account.

Diamond Medallion members who earn MQDs at each of the following thresholds can choose one more Beyond Diamond Choice Benefit:

$50,000 MQDs
$75,000 MQDs
$100,000 MQDs

What is a “Beyond Diamond Choice Benefit”? It’s a subset of options from the standard Delta Diamond threshold and some new options:

Four RUCs
Two GUCs
50,000 bonus miles (for yourself or gifted to others)
$5,000 MQD bonus for the next Medallion Year
Gift Platinum Medallion Status to up to two recipients
Gift Diamond Medallion Status to one recipient (only available at the $100,000 MQD threshold)

What Beyond Diamond Choice Benefit should you choose?

That’s the $50,000 (or $75,000 or $100,000) question. You only get one choice, so use it wisely. Well, not quite. But we’ll get to that.

Four RUCs

I think this is the weakest option, which will get more obvious later. Sure, it sounds good to have four flights in guaranteed domestic first class (or advance yourself to the top of the waitlist), but you can do better. If you have no one to play the game with, it’s fine.

Two GUCs

Securing Delta One international flights is awesome, especially if you can pair it with a visit to a Delta One Lounge. However, with Delta and most of its partners, it requires buying premium economy to secure the Delta One cabin in advance. The only exception to this is flights on KLM, where you can choose regular economy. I’d value two GUCs at far more than four RUCs.

50,000 Bonus Miles

You can always do better than a penny each for SkyMiles, so think of the floored value of this as $500. Not planning to take a major trip in the next year to use up RUCs or GUCs? Banking the value for the future isn’t a bad choice.

$5,000 MQD for the following year

If you feel like you’re not going to fly as much the following year, this can be a valuable benefit. But to really take advantage of this, you need a pretty good sense of future travel. If you naturally end up with $30,000 MQD, adding an extra $5,000 on top will be a complete waste. But naturally getting to $23,000 and throwing this $5,000 on top? Very helpful. How you value this is going to strictly based on your own estimation of future travel.

Gift Platinum Medallion status to two others

Now we’re talking. Remember the joke that if you get a genie, you should wish for more wishes? This is practically that. Let’s say you gift Platinum status to your spouse and a parent or a child. Each person receiving the status will also get their own set of Choice Benefits. And thus, you can encourage them to also stock up on RUCs.

This is why I feel choosing four RUCs for yourself isn’t good. I would just hand the status over to the kids and have a total of eight to use on our travels. Remember that you can use RUCs and GUCs on others as long as the owner of the certificates is also traveling with them.

Gift Diamond Medallion status to one other

Yes, this one is pretty valuable if you are devoted to Delta and can earn it. You’d want to choose someone who doesn’t yet have Platinum status so they could earn both sets of Choice Benefits. If it’s your spouse or other close relative, that might mean you can encourage them to choose both four RUCs and four GUCs, for example. Still, it’s neat that this status level can be gifted.

What about Delta 360 status?

Since the Delta 360 status criteria isn’t publicized, it’s hard to make definitive statements about how to earn it. There have been suggestions that the MQD threshold varies depending on where the member is located (it’s harder to earn the status in Atlanta than in Dallas). It’s also handed out for free to key business partners and to those with five million lifetime miles. When status is considered “invitation only”, they’re not going to make the algorithm easy to figure out.

At a minimum, if you’re not a key business partner, I think it’s reasonable to assume that you most likely need to hit at least the $50,000 MQD threshold to get the Delta 360 status. However, there are also reports it takes more than $100,000 MQDs. Good luck if you’re trying to chase this down.

What does Delta 360 status get you? On paper, not much more than Diamond Medallion status:

Access to Delta One Lounges when traveling in Delta first class (guests cost $100/person up to two others or immediate family members)
A Delta Sky Club Executive Membership
Boarding in Zone 2
Bag tags (or are they brag tags?)
A dedicated 24/7 phone line

Where the real benefit comes in is the soft treatment. Expect tarmac transfers on short layovers, and a willingness to bend the published rules a bit.

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