Not sure if this has been discussed before. I am wondering about the sticky OWS status I had for years on JL despite expiry.
I had held AA Platinum status (=OWS) for some time, but stopped flying frequently at one point and spent 5 years or so as a non-status commoner. I flew to Japan on JL Y (marketed by JL or AA) once a year during that period.
What is interesting is that during that 5 years of non-status period, my boarding pass on JL flights kept indicating the OWS status and lounge access. When I first noticed to that, I was not comfortable with carrying undeserved privileges, so I mentioned this to the ground staff, but they had no idea and did nothing about it. Since I had done my part
, I tried stopping by the lounge, but that was actually denied. However, I had several OPUPs to J, always got priority tags on my baggage, heard the "status ding" when passing through domestic gates, and FAs came by to greet me most likely because of this odd status.
Does anybody know what this was? Maybe my OW status was stored around some far corner of the data center which nobody was managing, so maybe I had a fake lifetime OWS status? Now that I have regained a legitimate status due to another travel pattern change, I don't need to worry about this now, but am curious what was going on. It will be interesting to see what happens when I lose my status again (may happen).