Originally Posted by
budblab
So, to summarize, the advantage of PM/gifted FO would be the waived change fees on award tix ($150 per ticket).
For 2015 the RDM earnings would be equal if we fly together on the same fares (9+7 vs. 8+8 miles/$).
The advantage of two GM would be waived SDC fee for the FO ($50).
Upgrade priority for PM>GM>FO, so the chance of a single upgrade is higher, and two upgrades would be lower.
Am I missing anything?
Note that the waived change fees on award tickets apply only to tickets booked from the PM (or DM) account. Under this strategy the PM account will earn more miles, but there will also be miles to use in the FO account.
Some couples in this situation would always send the lower status tier passenger on award tickets and always pay money for the higher tier elite's tickets so as to maximize that person's status, but I suspect that in your case, even this extreme strategy wouldn't make one person DM.
With rollover, there might be a way to play it so that one person drops status for only a few months but then comes back up early in the year due to having a lot of rollover and not using award tickets early in the year, but it's much harder to do this now with the MQD requirement (or AmEx waiver, although perhaps putting all expenses on that person's credit card early in the year could help, although at the expense of switching autopays back and forth between different AmEx accounts). You'd probably also need additional authorized user cards for each others' accounts and then to be very careful about which card to use when.