Originally Posted by
Leotis
I don’t at all appreciate the lack of transparency in their qualification criteria. If I spend $70k on 140k miles I expect more so I will treat them like they treat me and move loyalty elsewhere.
I agree it's frustrating trying to figure out what all the levers are. My EQD is mostly on unrestricted J/F fares booked on competitive routes that are supposedly high-margin for AA (JFK-LHR, JFK-SFO/LAX), and for those routes I could fairly easily move the bulk of my spend to UA or DL...which is why I thought I'd have a chance this year. I'm going to assume AA mostly knows what it's doing and its dataset of thousands and thousands of travelers tells them I'm not as valuable as I think I am (not really a surprise...), but there does seem to be at least one hole in their approach. It seems pretty compelling if I can move most of that high-margin (supposedly) 70k to UA and make GS out of EWR (which based on this year's reports looks pretty doable with that EQD level), which is exactly what I'd think the CK program is designed to prevent.
Of course at the end of the day I have no clue what goes on inside the black box of CK, and AA has no obligation to provide me anything other than the flight I purchased, but it probably doesn't make much sense to have a big disparity between GS and CK program qualification out of the same market. I'll give some real thought to switching to UA, especially as they roll out their new J product to London and start flying 787-10s on transcons.