Coming into the fray rather late but thought I would offer this perspective. AA's top tier Executive Platinum program caused a bit of consternation among AA ff's when it was first announced. The deal was (and is) you accumulate 100K EP points to gain the status which is based on mileage and class of ticket purchased. F class = 1.5 points/miles, C class = 1.25, Y/B = 1.0 and discount economy 0.5 - a minimum of 500 points are awarded per segment.

At first, I thought the scheme rather unfair when compared to UA's top tier where you just have to accumulate 100K miles to reach their top tier. My viewpoint changed somewhat when I looked at it from the mathematical perspective. If you fly approx 67000 miles in first class you would qualify. If you fly 80000 miles in business class you would qualify. Now, in comparison to United, you would not get 1K qualification, just Premier Executive, which is pretty much the same as AA's Platinum. I was convinced further when I qualified in the first year EP was introduced on approx 93,000 miles, based on a mixture of discount, full econ, business and first class tickets. No way I would have got 1K on United!

Granted, not everyone is lucky enough to travel on full fare or premium cabin tickets. However, in the examples given above at the very least in AA's program you get mid tier status, even if you fly on the cheapest tickets available.

I think AA's approach is a fair one - it rewards the very frequent flyer (who may be generating less revenue on a transaction basis, but does it consistently) and it rewards the premium ticket buyer who does'nt necessarily travel with the same frequency but generates a larger amount of revenue.