Originally Posted by
sailor279
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”
I did some crazy MR last year to get to EXP and have three more trips planed this year, some purely to get to EXP for the next year. AA will lose revenues from flyers like me, but I guess they don't care. They assume they'll pick it up elsewhere. Well, good luck to them. For now my plan is to use my almost 1M RDM balance with AA to fly in the foreseeable future. And even if I get their Citi AA Executive CC to gain AC access for the $450 annual charge it would still be cheaper then spend on all those MR.