Originally Posted by
ronniefastback
Regarding the "stickers"..... yeah, I'm fully aware of the 500 mile upgrades. I don't like them. I don't see the need for them. The # I have keeps growing because I can't use them. And some flights having 30+ on the upgrade list means there are plenty who want to use, but can't. On US, we didn't have that junk.... your preferred, if there's a seat you get it. On AA, you could have preferreds on the plane with no upgrades and potentially have 1st class seats sit empty on a flight if there we no 500 mile upgrades available. It will never happen because there are too many out there, but it's possible. That just seems stupid to me.... but I assume there's a reason for it....
If you are EXP then you don't earn segment upgrades, so if the number you have is growing, then you are PLT or GLD. For those elites, segment upgrades actually make it
more likely that your upgrade will clear. With systems such as what US had, where all elites get domestic upgrades for free, each elite is competing against all other elites at the same or higher level. With AA's system, GLD and PLT elites decide segment by segment if they want an upgrade enough to spend segment upgrades for it. So, PLTs who decide to spend segment upgrades are competing against other PLTs who also decided to, which is a subset of all the PLTs. Likewise for GLDs.
Originally Posted by
GUWonder
What proportion of EXPs don't spend enough money on travel to meet or exceed the amount of money that DL/UA has for Diamond/1K spending qualification?
I think there are a number of EXPs who spend most of their money for premium international travel where much of the flying is on partners. If AA had a minimum spend and only counted revenue allocated to AA flights, this could cut those EXPs.