Originally Posted by AtlasBurden

Hi there, long time lurker, first time poster here (so I apparently can't post URLs - sorry!). If I'm posting this in the wrong place, my apologies. I normally fly AA and am close to elite status with them (like $37 EQDs shy of gold, hoping to hit platinum by the end of the year).

However, I live in a remote part of the east coast and will need to be traveling to Paris several times over the next year or so (potentially as often as once a month and largely out of my own pocket). It looks like the cheapest flight options for me are the LEVEL flights out of Newark. As best as I can tell, AA offers no credit of any kind for flights taken on LEVEL.

However, it looks like Iberia *might* give some elite status credit? (I'd link to the elite status page on Iberia, but as I just registered my account, I can't post links yet!) The site is very unclear as to how they're credited and what I can receive from flying on LEVEL.

Ideally, what I would like is to convert these flights into Sapphire oneworld status so that I could get Admiral's Lounge access when flying other oneworld flights, but I'm open to other ideas.

Obviously the best thing would be if I could get some kind of elite status credit with AA, but I don't think that's possible.

Any ideas on how to maximize the benefits of these flights?
What elite program should I credit the flights to?
Should I book them in a certain way to maximize my benefits?
Any help here would be much appreciated.