Amen to that.

I'm a primarily leisure and self-funded EXP - my freelance professional life allows me the flexibility to do this - and for me, it's more about the experience of traveling well than the ability to travel a lot.

Put another way, this year I did four longhaul trips (all SWU upgraded), plus a number of intra-North America trips to requalify for 2016 EXP, and I've been planning to do the same for 2016.

Now, with the announced changes, I'll probably be doing two revenue longhaul trips SWU-upgraded, and then buying a discount J longhaul, at least by 2017 to qualify for 2018. Sure, that discount J will cost more out of pocket, but it will be guaranteed J with "will it clear?" drama, and it means that I'll either:

a) not have to do MR's (like the DCA-CLT-SAN-CLT-DCA I'm doing next week) to requalify because of the EQM doubling on the J fare; or

b) fly more and get the additional SWU's and RDM's.

So while this is a devaluation in black and white terms, it's not the game-over situation I had been fearing. Rather than knocking me back to a humiliated Plat or forcing me to earn AS status, AA has made the game more interesting, demanding less of my time and maybe getting a little more money for themselves. In turn, that tells me that this AAirline has much more savvy management and might offer more opportunities than DL (which I haven't touched since CO left SkyTeam) or UA (which I left when they announced the PQD system while AA maintained a more traditional program).

And the change in rules may require me to seek out slightly different destinations. For example, under the current regime I'm doing all my longhaul travel on AA metal so I can use SWU's. Now, maybe that discounted longhaul premium ticket will be on BA or LA or CX and get me to a destination AA doesn't serve. Or maybe it will be a matter of flying AA to someplace in Europe or Asia and continuing via discounted J (e.g. the recent BA ex-DUB or AA ex-Brazil deals, etc.). Again, it's not an improvement for me by any stretch, but it will force me to think outside the box without foreclosing the possibility that good fruit will be yielded for my efforts.

ALL THAT SAID...

When AA starts awarding RDM based on spend rather than distance, they will have the IT in place to track spend in a way that could very easily become EQD as part of the 2017 qualification process for 2018 status. Am I getting that right? Does anybody have further insight into this possibility?