Originally Posted by
BillBurn
Between increasing the EQD requirement to 15K and eliminating the EQD bonuses on the Barclays cards, AA definitely appears to be trying to weed out a lot of low spending EXPs. I wonder what impact this will have on the overall # of EXPs in 2020. Could be good news for those EXPs that remain in terms of upgrade competition, service levels, etc. ... or not.
As one of those “low spenders” (relatively), I was bummed to receive the letter from Barclays this weekend, followed by this news. I could have easily managed one decrease or the other but not both. Now, this requires a really aggressive change in spending/biz travel. I supposed the silver lining is that this will weed out a decent chunk of us low spenders to open even more upgrade opps..provided I can requal for ‘20.
This year I was able to apply 3 SWU on flights between LAX-HKG and LHR-LAX. Previous year, upgraded my wife on LAX-SYD so I’ve got no complaints on that front. Worth the spend.
If Ben Franklin were around (and flying) today, he might have amended his famous statement to “nothing can be said to be certain, except deathandtaxes
...and elite program devaluations”