My gut feeling is that preferred visa will be available to apply for starting 3/1. I'm curious what chase will use for the deciding factor on card conversion types (old signature cards=new prefered maybe?).
The TQM awarded are 1500 per 10k in spending, so sans any base flight points, it would take $466,000 in spending to "buy" A+ list, or $233,000 to buy A-list.