Originally Posted by
Phoenixtinct
I find that hard to believe. If only for 1 reason - AAdvantage has 3 elite tiers and US DM has 4. It was already announced that US DM will be merged with AAdvantage in 2015, so no changes are unlikely. And that's ignoring all other aspects of the programs, i. e. one-way awards with AAdvantage but only round-trip with US DM, etc.
When the latest award levels were announced - especially for US DM members, it was explained with the reason to allign better with the AAdvantage program. So, that's what I expect - have both programs be practically identical but differ in name only before they fold US DM into AAdvantage.
What your statement implies is that AAdvtange will continue as 3 tiers and it doesn't explain what will happen to US Platinums when they are merged into Aadvantage.
They are not merging the programs at the moment so this is not an issue. Recall Delta & NW and UA & CO. They did not merge their FF programs immediately.
I don't know if DM is being folded into AAdvantage in 2015, but i know for sure that the current AAdvantage program is not changing in 2015. There might be small little changes like awards or whatever on par of what we seen today, but no sweeping changes. The program and the way you earn miles will stay the same at least until 2016. And quite honestly, US doesn't even have that many elite members, you're talking about the smallest of the 4 major mainline carriers. (not counting WN).
Quite honestly AA/US has bigger problems to deal with during their merger than the loyalty programs (such as system integration, which must be completed before any merging of FF programs takes place).
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What is likely: SOMETIME in 2015, you will be given the option for DM members to transfer their miles or whatever over to an AAdvantage account, but i dont think any forced merger will happen yet.