<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by BlatheringPenguin:
On American you can (at various times) effectively buy lifetime status. Lifetime gold once you've had 1million miles flow through your account, lifetime platinum after 2million. Note, NOT flight miles, miles from any source. So, if you have a way of purchasing AA miles, you can purchase lifetime status. ... I don't know if there's currently any way to purchase AA miles in large quantities or not. I hit 2m on AA primarily through flight and credit card...</font>
Unfortunately, the annual limits on mileage purchase would make this impractical - even if lifetime gold was worth the $25K, or lifetime PLT the $50K, that it would cost via this route.
For the past two years (this and next) AA has let some people pay to keep first-tier (Gold) and mid-tier (PLT) status, though. There are some restrictions: you have to have earned it the hard way the year before, you have to have flown a good fraction of the miles, though not enough to requalify; and you only get to do it once. There's more on this in the AA boards, with some folks feeling it dilutes status but most agreeing that the restrictions keep the dilution within reason.