Originally Posted by
Howardsarin
After a year of thoroughly enjoyable EXP status on AA, I will slip back to PLAT in 2014. It's my own dang fault -- failed to spend enough on the Citi card -- and the mileage-run remedies were too expensive. (Worse: the fact that I spent more than one evening comparison shopping flights to Beijing says something about my value systems that I'm not entirely proud of. *G*)
Anyway, I'm bracing for the decline in March. What's going to hurt the worst?
Loss of the SWUs will hurt the most. Although, if you fly a good bit of domestic flights and don't have too many stickers, the loss of comp upgrades could hurt too. For my patterns though, its the loss of SWUs that will hurt when I drop back to Plat (or even Gold).