Originally Posted by
js1993
How is AA supposed to know/verify everyone's relatives? It would be an administrative nightmare and, in this day and age, a potential p.r. nightmare.
That aside, with this "family pooling" idea, a person could go from zero to PP or even EXP by booking several family members on a single trip to Asia in J on a partner airline. Why would AA want to allow that?
I'm not sure why verifying relatives is so complex, AA already does it for spouse AC memberships. They just need you to upload a marriage/birth/adoption certificate and it would be done. They could also cap it at 3-4 family members per person.
I completely disagree with your second statement. I just did the math and it would take 8 round trip business class trips on routes such as ORD-DOH-BKK on QR or ORD-HND-BKK on JAL to earn EXP (10 if cabin bonuses don't count; not sure since I haven't done any partner flights since LPs). Assuming you can buy each ticket for a really good price of $3000 (cheapest I'm seeing), you'd have to pay AA partners $24000 for this trip to earn EXP, whereas on your own flights, it takes ~$18,000 to earn EXP. Add in the fact that your hypothetical means AA doesn't have to pay out Elite Choice Rewards and it seems like a no-brainer for AA to offer this deal. This perfectly falls in line with AA's current program, where you can already earn EXP without stepping foot in an airport.