Recap of Maya Leibman's remarks on the subject yesterday morning (4/29/2011) at Randy's confab, excerpted from the
View from the Wing blog.
Leibman confirmed that American is looking at changes to their million miler program. In answer to another question later on the propositon of elite level customers, she reported that her Gold and Platinum ranks were a bit more swelled than at the other programs as a result of the million miler program (one reason they feel they need to make changes). But she reported that the details of the changes were not completely final, most importantly though she assured that the changes would be clearly communicated to members in advance, that there would be notice rather than suggesting that the changes were either already in place (as some have speculated) or that the changes would go into effect in a metter of days or weeks. Bottom-line: folks should be able to learn about the changes, and then transfer in all of their Starwood points… or perhaps even that a credit card signup bonus now will make it possible to push members over the top for a given lifetime elite status threshold. Recall, of course, that the current method of earning American’s lifetime status is to obtain over 1 million miles from any source in your account for Gold, or 2 million for Platinum. Fortunately I received my 2 million mile status over the past summer, I’m guessing that the changes will prevent me from making 3 million miles (for another set of international upgrades, but not higher status) in the near future. Though we don’t know whether only flight miles will count or whether it’ll be flight miles plus some other miles although it will no longer be miles from all sources that count.