Speculation: Percentage or Number of ExPlat, Plat and Gold Elite members?
At the end of the year, my flying pattern indicates that I'll be joining the ranks of ExPlats. To make myself feel even more special, I did a search to determine from past speculation the answer to the number of ExPlats that AA has, as well as Plats and Golds.
So far I've come up with:
Some members from this flyertalk thread from 2001 bandied about 35 million AAdvantage members, 750k Gold, 250k Plat, 60k ExPlat.
Some members in this thread from 2004 speculated that there were approximately 20,000-30,000 ExPlats.
Well if it isn't this old zombie of a thread... we keep stabbing it with garlic-marinated silver stakes, those UV bullets from 'Blade'... this one time, a demon even bit my finger off and fell into a river of lava with this thread in its mouth... but still... it WON'T DIE!
__________________
"Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis." - R. Waldo Emerson
So, is it a guess based on some actual background information or a pure, random number with no basis in reality whatsoever? Perhaps you know the answer to that one as well.
The AAdvantage Program was the first and is the world's largest frequent flyer program. Established in 1981, the program now claims more than 56 million members.[/quote]
When my upgrade clears, I couldn't care less how many EXPs, Plats and Golds there are. If my upgrade doesn't clear, it's obvious that there are too many EXPs.
In this thread, CO Insider, who is usually truthful as far as we can tell on the CO board, claims that CO has around 60K / 110K / 250K top / mid / bottom tier elites. It's a little easier to qualify for CO Plat than for EXP, and AA is a substantially larger airline, but multiply those numbers by about 1.8 (the ratio of AA's revenue passenger miles flown to CO's), reduce the top tier number and increase the mid tier number a bit to compensate for it being harder to earn EXP, and you'll be in the right ballpark, I guess.
Programs: AA EXP 1.8MM, HH Gold, SPG Gold, Traveler's Aid JFK Volunteer
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Quote:
Originally Posted by FWAAA
From a press release in March of 2007:
The AAdvantage Program was the first and is the world's largest frequent flyer program. Established in 1981, the program now claims more than 56 million members.
Of those 56 million, probably less than 1/4 have regular (quarterly? monthly?) flight activity.
Remember that the vast majority of the traveling public has 3-4 business trips per year and the annual vacation with the kids to Disney. We FTers are unusual!
I would estimate close to a million GLDs (most of whom probably don't even realize they have it and never take advantage of the benefits). This category would include 1MMers who never fly or who have partner activity only.
Among AA elites (ONLY elites), perhaps 30-40% are PLT, and less than 10% are EXP.
Also, we have to keep in mind that if we fly LGA-DFW, LGA-ORD, LAX-JFK, RDU-AUS, AUS-SJC, that we will experience a much higher proportion of elites than a normal representative sample.
For any given mainline widebody flight ON AVERAGE, perhaps we could say an AVERAGE of 6-10 GLDs, 3-4 PLTs, 1 or 0 EXPs.
I have based these numbers on no actual data; just my personal speculation. So no flames please!
Last edited by ESpen36; Sep 18, 07 at 3:06 pm.
Reason: added disclaimer
In this thread, CO Insider, who is usually truthful as far as we can tell on the CO board, claims that CO has around 60K / 110K / 250K top / mid / bottom tier elites. It's a little easier to qualify for CO Plat than for EXP, and AA is a substantially larger airline, but multiply those numbers by about 1.8 (the ratio of AA's revenue passenger miles flown to CO's), reduce the top tier number and increase the mid tier number a bit to compensate for it being harder to earn EXP, and you'll be in the right ballpark, I guess.
Good reasoning!
I think the CO Plat number is inflated since it only requires 75,000 miles, so I'm not sure I would multiply 60,000 x 1.8 to get the number of AA EXP's. The 60,000 number itself seems about right.
I think I read on here that a few years back, UA had 40,000 1K's, but I'm sure that's a larger number now.
...Also, we have to keep in mind that if we fly LGA-DFW, LGA-ORD, LAX-JFK, RDU-AUS, AUS-SJC, that we will experience a much higher proportion of elites than a normal representative sample...
If we fly any route, no matter what, we will encounter a much higher proportion of elites than they represent in the headcount - for the simple reason that they fly more!
If an average non-elite flies 5K miles/year and an average EXP flies 120K, the EXP flies 24 times as much. If, for example, EXPs represent 0.1 of 1% of all AA's passengers (56,000 out of 56 million, just to keep the numbers simple) they fly, in total, 2.4 percent of the miles. Therefore, they are likely to be 2.4 percent of the average passenger load on a random flight. Some routes will tend to have more, some less, but 1 EXP out of 40 is about what to expect. If there are 120 pax on a plane, there will (absent route differences) be 3 EXPs on average.
If there are twice that many PLTs but they average 60,000 miles/year, that's another 2.4 percent, and the same number per plane. Personal experience says I see more PLTs than EXPs, and the 2:1 flying ratio for each can't be very far off, so there are probably more than twice as many PLTs and 2.4 percent for them is probably low.
If the average Gold member flies 30K/year, and there are ten times as many Golds as EXPs, that's another 20 percent or so of the typical plane's load.
That leaves somewhere in the low 70 percents for "self-loading cargo."
Feel free to substitute your own numbers, of course. This is just an example.
The 60k number of EXPs commonly bandied about in 2001 included all the comped "our best customers," IIRC. That program ended and the ranks of EXPs was definitely smaller by 2003.
It also included all the top-tier TWA elites (dunno how many of them requalified or moved to other airlines).
Since then, the rules have changed to allow qualification by segments, which everyone said at the time would cause the ranks of EXPs to balloon. Dunno by how many.
