AJollyLife

Has anyone had success getting AA to merge their US Airways and AA accounts for EQM's this year?

I'm sitting at 54k eqms on AA and 23K on US. If I could get them combined I'd fly a bit more AA flights and keep my exec plat status, otherwise I'm considering status challenging to United, or doing midtier status across different airlines.

I ended up in this situation because I was expecting them to merge faster, and I had US air status for the first part of this year, so was using that for upgrades.

Any advice on how I might convince AA/US to merge my EQM's?

sjpmurph01

You might get lucky but I wouldn't get your hopes up. They started pushing the message early on that they would not be combining accounts/status qualification during the 2014 program year.

It doesn't hurt to ask, but I wouldn't expect much.

PHL

Not a chance. You're one among millions of us (literally) waiting for the merger of miles (and also million mile counts).

It is possible they will count this years combined earned EQMs towards next years "new" AAdvantage elite statuses but that's just conjecture at this point.

Give it another 6 months or so....

JDiver

AA have announced FFPs merger will occur next year. To my knowledge there is, and will not be, the opportunity to do this during the remainder of 2014. We will have to continue crediting miles to one FFPS or another this year, AFAIK.

JohnnyP

The official word is no:

https://twitter.com/ParisJetSetter/s...08727083216896

Beach9bum

What is the latest on the combination of miles from US Air into Advantage account?

Thank you.

FWAAA

If I recall correctly, in 2001, AA managed to combine qualifying activity of TWA, LLC plus AA by the end of that year, and that transaction didn't close until April 10.

In the present combination, the merger closed last December 9, and new AA is saying that 2014 activity on US and AA won't be combined to determine status for 2015?

What's so complicated about this time that management needs so much additional time? WTH have they been doing? Is it the focus on downgrades to meals on pmAA flights? Is it the unannounced and immediate changes to the award charts?

3Cforme

They haven't announced a plan to transfer miles.

They haven't announced a plan to combine elite qualifying miles from US and AA.

It will all be very, very big news on FT when the plan and details to merge the programs is announced.

Phoenixtinct

Indeed and starting January of this year, they announced initial benefits of recognizing status on the partner airline. It took them 6 months to announce reciprocal upgrades but according to each program's rules.

They were very fast in implementing changes to their advantage but not what a lot of customers actually want. Either Suzanne Rubin is very slow in making decisions or her hand is being forced.

Either way I'm letting my AA PLT status lapse and once they figure out what new AAdvantage will look like and I'll decide then if I want to be a part of it or not.

So far, extremely unimpressed with their "progress" so far.

Lomapaseo

If I book a USAir flight on the USAir site and enter my AA FF# will the miles count towards AA Elite status as well as MM status in my AA program account.

JDiver

You must choose which airline you wish miles to post and for status accrual at this time, regardless of whether you fly AA or US, so if you fly US with your AAdvantage number in the record you will accrue AAdvantage miles, MM credit and status credit, just like any AA / oneworld partner airline (but you don't have to worry about no or merely a percentage of miles counting, as you would on some oneworld partners).

fish114

I have a feeling that the IT challenge for this is pretty complex, given that on day 0 of the merger they had two disparate airlines that didn't even codeshare (read: their systems barely talked to each other). It also sounds like leadership would rather move slowly on this one and not risk issues like UA/CO and US/HP mergers (especially since they have the experience of going through the US/HP mergers). You unfortunately have to do the "big bang" approach for most components of airline integration, so that likely means LOTS of testing before go-live. Also alot of the dev will be relatively expensive if it will be eventually be migrated to the AA system (e.g. the ability to earn stickers on the US side -- this is a major IT headache -- do you build this functionality into the US system or migrate all US customers to AA to do this)?

This has also been the communication from the airline as well -- for example the upgrade list issue has been communicated as "our systems don't support this at this time."

So I think the bottom line here is that leadership is moving conservatively, understanding that they prefer to impact customer solution service level over reliability service level. Put in the perspective of leadership, would you rather have months of CXs and delays due to a premature systems integration or a few ticked off customers that they can't get upgrades?

LovePrunes

they probably don't feel they have to announce much of how 2015 will work until late late 2014, even though for those of us who buy tickets far in advance like me, that makes it a little troubling to know what to plan for next year. As platinum I'm happy with the upgrades i've gotten when flying US, so I'm ok with just waiting to see. Besides what else can you do? Really I'm more interested if Lifetime Plat becomes the 2nd or 3rd tier of the combined program, than I am aout merging EQMs. There's a whole other general topic for that, however.

Oneonta

FWIW, A U.S. Airways Flight Attendant on a recent flight told me while making small talk, that they have been told that everything would be merged and wrapped up by April 6, 2015 when I asked about the program merger.

TheDudeAbides

Well, that settles it then. If an FA said so, then let's bank on it.