Originally Posted by
nkedel
Do the other alliances have 3 levels of benefits?
The really big benefit level jump on OW seems to be with lounge access for Sapphire, but not for Ruby.
They're two-tier. That being said, Star Gold is much closer to Emerald than Sapphire -- it comes with lounge access, priority check-in, and extra baggage allowances. Ruby has a theoretical edge in terms of offering F lounges and check-in, but in reality the *G facilities at a lot of airports are quite nice. E.g., *G gets you access to Senator lounges at LH hubs, not just the J lounges.
Sapphire is going to be a pretty big downgrade to any US elites who have *G today.
Originally Posted by
swag
If AA implements this rule, as you suggest, it would be a way to give 75K level flyers de facto higher upgrade status than 50-74K pax. (Well, sort of, since the qualifying year may not match the counter used for upgrade priority; but for flyers who fly consistent numbers of miles each year it comes close).
But - who gets hurt with a rule like this are segment qualifiers. A current AA PLT who gets there by flying midcons with connections, like 15x OKC-DFW-CLE might have under 40K EQM. And who really gets killed are the lifetime elites, who may have YTD miles very far below all the annual qualifiers.
I believe the US rule is actually previous year mileage from January to June, and current year mileage from July through December.
US is not great for segment qualifiers to begin with -- in addition to not being considered for upgrade priority, the requirements are somewhat higher (30/60/90/120 segments for the four tiers).
I think it's unlikely, but I'd be interested to see if AA considers doing three tiers at higher levels -- say, 30/60/100k. That would solve the problem of lifetime elites, and would help make the lower tier a little more exclusive.
At UA and DL, the 25k tier is nearly useless; the realistic chances for an upgrade are nil, and you get most of the other benefits with the credit card anyway. AA and US both still have value in their 25k tier today, but that tier is going to get crushed in the larger airline. Even though I'm not realistically going to be affected by it, in principle I'd rather see that tier be harder to get than watered down.