Originally Posted by
sidorg222
I thinksit's almost impossible to achieve Platinum from Gold and only spend $1200 on flights.
If you're starting from scratch (i.e. you didn't fly at all in 2015, the year you had earned Platinum status), sure. If you flew a fair amount but less than 50k miles, the marginal cost to get to 50k may well have been much less than $1200. And unless your travel patterns changed significantly, why would you pay $1200 for a status you didn't use last year?
And with the EQP points going away, it becomes even harder.
I don't understand this. Almost no one who qualified on EQPs in the past will be worse off this year; the only fares that earn fewer 2016 EQMs than old EQPs are partner-marketed flights in mid-priced economy (which have gone from 1.0 EQPs to 0.5 EQMs) and full fare Y/B on partners (which have gone from 1.5 EQPs to 1.0 EQMs). The fares that earned 1.5 EQPs all (except partner full Y/B) earn at least 1.5 EQMs now, and AA-marketed premium cabin fares earn more than that.
It's EQM qualifiers who had partner-marketed flights in economy who got really hosed with the changes, not EQP qualifiers.