A few economic factors have led to acute elite bloat in recent years. Airlines have cut capacity, so planes are packed and there are fewer choice seats to hand out. Business travel has returned with the economic recovery. Airlines have increasingly chased after co-branded credit card business by handing out not only redeemable points to credit card holders but also miles that count toward elite qualification — so some customers are getting elite status based on their nonairline spending.

Image Last October, Delta challenged frequent fliers to demonstrate they were truly deserving of this elite beverage.

As airlines merge, it is easier for travelers to consolidate all their travel with one airline and achieve status without flying lots of painful connections. As such, flying 60,000 miles a year on a single airline isn’t the feat it once was. (This last part, incidentally, was one of the plot holes in “Up in the Air”: If George Clooney was flying everywhere on pre-merger American, why didn’t every other scene involve him connecting in Dallas?)

If you’ve flown a Monday morning Delta flight from New York to Atlanta, you’ve probably seen an upgrade list that is 70 names deep, and you may understand why it’s no longer enough for airlines to add status tiers. They have to cut the ranks of fliers who are eligible for various benefits.

Partly, they have done this through moves like the one announced in that “exclusivity” email: United and Delta imposed, then increased, minimum-spending requirements on top of the usual distance-based requirements to reach elite status. American and United have made it harder to reach elite status by flying on their partner airlines like Croatia Airlines or Germanwings.

But mostly, they have dealt with the problem of excess elites by devaluing the lowest tier. United and Delta’s first tiers are both named for silver, which is a precious metal, but silver customers are increasingly treated like zinc.

“Benefits that used to be available to members with the first tier of elite status now are held back for folks with mid-tier,” said Gary Leff, who writes the View from the Wing blog on frequent-flier programs. Or as they say, 50,000 miles is the new 25,000.

For example, airlines no longer have all their elites board at once. On Delta, only Gold Medallion and higher fliers are allowed to walk the Sky Priority carpet; Silver Medallions board afterward, as Zone 1. And they must use the same line as the other passengers. United and American have also split up their elite boarding, with the higher-status tiers boarding before the entry-level one. On Delta, Silvers have been banned from the priority check-in and security lanes since 2010.