AA Advantage used to be my FF program of choice, I used to laud and praise everything about it and earned and used over 200K miles over a period of a few years domestically and internationally. However, it changed. Everything I have said about it is based on my personal experience and is true for me and my particular airport/routes. If any information is incorrect, then I was incorrectly told it by AA CSR themselves --- I did not make anything up. If something I said is wrong, then please correct me as I'd be interested in knowing what is really right as well. Like I said, I used them in the past and don't claim to know how they are right now.

One interesting tidbit that I used before was this: I never was able to use any of my earned upgrade coupons to upgrade. HOWEVER, I found out that (at that time, I think 2000 or 2001?) they would convert each 500mile upgrade cert to 2,500 AAdvantage miles. So when I earned 4coupons/10K flown over the 25K mark, I could turn them into 10K AA miles. I was very grateful someone told me about this, 'cause my upgrade coupons were expiring from non-use. I'd convert them to AA miles before they expired. Later however, I was told that each upgrade coupon only earned something like 500 miles?? I'm not sure of the reduced amount as I stopped earning the upgrades. And I'm not even sure how AA does upgrades these days since I don't fly them much anymore.