MarkOK

Umm, this misses my point entirely, and for every generalization there is someone that will say 'not uh, that doesn't apply to me' (well, it isn't always about you). My jab there was just that the system is well suited to awarding people who are stuck flying at the discretion of other people with other people's money -- and not necessarily well suited to rewarding the loyalty of people who spend their own money at their own discretion (unless, I guess, you can afford to throw tens of thousands of dollars a year on personal travel). Getting rid of expiration deadlines allows more people to accumulate enough miles overtime to actually get rewarded if they make decisions to fly with AA. If AA wants to attract the at-large public to pay any premium above LCCs to fly with them, then one of the small things they can do is have a frequent flyer program that doesn't threaten to take away earned miles after an arbitrary time of 'no activity'. I am saying that I celebrate anything that makes the program more useful for more people.

From AA's point of view -- the question is how many people are saying 'why bother' signing up and caring about a loyalty program when they don't think they can commit to flying with that program every so many months? I think this is a LOT of people (me included, up until a few years ago when I started travelling more regularly). When those people want to plan a trip next year, they will more likely book with AA, even if it might cost just a bit more, if they have an AAdvantage account and think they are going to some day earn a free trip from it.