Now Citi offer three levels of AAdvantage cards:
$50 Gold Visa / Amex
$85 Platinum Select Visa / Amex
$450 Executive World Elite MC

I don't understand why so many people want to use a $50 or $85 Citi AA card after the 1st year. It does not give bonus to AA purchases. The only positive thing is the reduced miles awards. I think only if you have Citi Gold and get annual fee waived, it makes sense to keep it. Even with that, charging your daily spending to a Citi AA card (1 mile/$) is not returning better value than SPG (1.25 mile/$). Assuming you have the Citi AF waived, you just need spend $17.3K to overcome SPG's $65 AF (I take a conservative estimate of 1.5 cent/mile, $17,300*0.25*1.5/100=$65). Also correct if I am wrong, AA miles transferred from SPG also counts for life time AA status. Am I missing something here???