Originally Posted by
diver858
From personal experience, assume there are many others like me: As an AA lifetime platinum elite, I enjoyed reciprocal elite benefits on AS, but rarely had reason to fly the Eskimo. As AS developed its focus city in SAN, to all Hawaiian islands, transcon nonstops to BOS, EWR and MCO, then intra-California to FAT, SJC and SMF, it became the carrier of choice for much of my travel. As the AA-AS partnership dissolved, it made sense to fly AS enough to earn MPV / MVPG status.
The FT AS forum has a fair share of whiners, but as a long-term elite who suffered through the downfall of AA, devaluation of the Aadvantage program and elite benefits, I am quite pleased to be a loyal AS customer.
Yes, I am also an AA lifetime Platinum with 2.4 mil, based in SAN, and have always placed my AS miles into AA. Having reached that level in 2009, I then put most of my miles into AS while flying AS and BA and Qantas, but now I am running into terrible trouble with having built up my son's miles on AA to the 600,000 mile level already hoping to go permanent Gold before he is 18 (he is 11, flying 50,000+ miles a year, mostly internationally with me), and our booking AA for him (with me) will not get me AS miles, but I really want to requalify for AS Gold again. He is a minor, so I cannot book BA for me and AA for him on the same flights. I would rather fly and earn AS all the time now with the fantastic service and attitude and food I get on AS, but I need to get my miles from flights to Europe (where I used to get my AA and BA miles) and NZ and AU (Qantas miles).
(On the original topic, based in SAN, I have been superlucky to get tons of free upgrades on AS even when I paid very little for my fares, but then, I also buy first class tickets outright in between, when I am late in the game, and the difference between full fare economy and First Class is not that big).