Originally Posted by
bigred21
I have a question about the AA FFP. How long on average would it take to earn a million miles. I am 23 now, but recently read in article about FFM, and there value and I have decided it is a great thing to get started on while I'm young. I mainly fly out of STL or KCI, and can't decide on an alliance FFP to join. I was thinking Star Alliance, but I'm confused and a little unsure about making a commitment. I know the FFP's value Loyalty and so I would like to start building miles now. This 'lifetime gold' status is something that intrigues me, and I would love to start accumulating miles now. Any advice on choosing a FFP would be much appreciated. On a final note, I am probably going to get an SPG AmEx card, because of the great value it also offers. Are there similar status's you can reach with that card? Thanks for everyone's help, and good luck with your battle skywalker.
-BW
I think there's a thread on the AA forum where people shared how long it took for them to reach 1M. I've done very little business travel so the vast majority of my million miles on AA is from credit cards and it took about 15 years. About 300K+ from churning (churning is being curtailed but if you don't already have cards with AA you can still get at least 1 bonus - see the Other Credit Cards Forum for more info) and probably 500K+ miles for transferring points from Starwood - earned using the Starwood Amex. I wish I were 23 again and had a resource like Flyer Talk - I'd have made that 1M mark a lot faster!
Regarding which FFP - I concentrated on AA because they had a hub where I lived when I started collecting miles. Now I'm hooked on the benefits so I don't know enough about the other airlines to advise you. But there are plenty of others here who will.