Originally Posted by
Cap'n Benj
As a BA base emerald you're nowhere near the front of the upgrade queue on domestics on AA
If you're traveling enough to earn GGL on AA you'd be pretty much guaranteed an upgrade to F domestically every single flight!
Otherwise your point does make sense to me that beyond the basic 3 tiers, some kind of revenue based system would make sense, ensuring that the customers delivering most revenue are best rewarded
Automatic upgrades are increasingly difficult on AA as many first class cabins sell out days or weeks in advance.
Revenue is a very blunt and poor mechanism to measure profit. For example, someone could spend £800 on a last minute return to Europe or an advance purchase ex-DUB sale to the US. The former is likely more valuable to BA, but the mechanism for measuring profitability is challenging. And I don't think BA would want to irk passengers by measuring revenue through the exclusion of carrier surcharges.
Either way I'd be well over any minimum spend calculations that AA uses or BA could consider, but as others have noted, those that earn GGL on the cheap get the least benefit from the program. I'm sure the various status levels do their job, which is to encourage customers to spend more with BA and OW.