To me, the top perks of CK are Flagship lounge access on domestic flights and Cadillac/cart rides on tight connections. Otherwise, onboard service is the same (rarely recognized, and even if so, nothing is different) and the phone calls/handshakes before boarding (while a wonderful and appreciated gesture) are nothing too meaningful. AA has an amazing CK team and they do a fine job, but due to so many IROPs and terrible disruptions in the past 8 months of my own travel, I have moved spend away from AA. Will probably finish the year at around $45-50k instead of $82k last year. Hoping that a kindly worded letter explaining the drop off in spend (due to AA dropping the ball so much) will still allow me to participate next year as a CK!