Originally Posted by
gemac
You definitely have to work harder at it. The best strategy depends on where you live. DFW is tough, as noted above, and ORD is pretty tough too. But both have an airport served by AA pretty close by (AUS for DFW, MKE for ORD), so flyers can get an extra segment and extra 1000 miles by originating at the nearby airport.
Austin is 200 miles from DFW, and usually 4 hours given traffic and construction.
There's no doubt that it's harder to get to each elite level when you live in a mid-continent hub city, at least if your travel is primarily domestic. But the upside is that a relatively short nonstop will get you almost anywhere in the US48.