Day: February 1, 2017

RDU-AUS (and v.v.) flight on @Delta coming March 9th! #KeepClimbing

I have no idea how I missed this news, but Delta is going to be connecting Austin and Raleigh with a year-round, daily flight starting March 9th of this year. It’ll be on a CRJ-900, which will be a tight fit for the 1,162 miles between the two airports, but it’s hard to beat that convenience.

The CRJ-900 has a range of 1,553 nautical miles (just over 1780 statute miles), so it isn’t surprising that it would be used to test the interest of the route.

From the Austin-Bergstrom website:

Delta’s new year round, daily nonstop flights between Austin, Texas and Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina are scheduled as follows: Flights depart – Austin daily at 11:15 a.m. and arrive in Raleigh-Durham at 3:10 p.m. Flights depart Raleigh-Durham daily at 8:30 a.m. and arrive in Austin at 10:40 a.m. The flight will be operated by GoJet on a CRJ-900 aircraft with 76 seats.

Courtesy of GCMap.com

Excited About @Delta Choice Benefits for 2017 and 2018! #KeepClimbing

As René over at BoardingArea mentioned, there are some huge changes coming with the 2018 Medallion year (I haven’t qualified yet, but I am on track to maintain my Diamond!). Through the 2017 Medallion year, Delta has been the only one of the “Big Three” (American, United, and Delta) to offer club access to their top-tier members. Starting with the 2018 Medallion year this will be going away, instead offering a third choice benefit for qualifying Diamonds.

As many of us carry either an American Express Platinum card or American Express Delta Reserve card, this offers a great deal of flexibility as you now have a third perk to pick. As icing on the cake, if you carry the Reserve card, you have a full Individual membership already, so you can upgrade to the Executive membership using only one selection (instead of two: one for the Individual membership, one for executive)!

Other changes coming include the ability to select your benefits independently – which has a huge nuisance up until now, and the ability to select benefits multiple times (other than upgrade certificates and Sky Club Memberships). You can see all the changes below.

Changes!

There aren’t a lot of changes to the benefits themselves, but I’m really looking forward to the coming years as a Diamond – I love the ability to make choices!