Originally Posted by
MarkOK
Because since ~2011 the three mileage counts (lifetime, EQM, and miles miles) all are independently scored with different rules anyways. It's like saying if you don't get elite bonuses on EQMs, why would you expect elite bonuses on miles miles? Or any other combination of arguments for why something is done on one mileage count but not the others.
MM is an extremely strict count. No bonuses for status or ticket type, no round up to 500 for short flights. You could say it is purely bis miles, but that isn't true-since bis miles on award tickets don't count either. I think including award ticket bis miles in the MM count makes MORE sense, not less sense. (and of course there are OW partner airline credits which are calculated differently anyways).
AA didn't make the change to make the program to make more sense. It made the changes to limit the number of miles that count so that fewer people would reach the limits. They were successful in achieving their goal.
Although I have no information on this I would still guess that AA will eventually make it even more restrictive.