FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - First Experience as EXP - AA is flooded with Elites
Old Nov 8, 2022, 11:16 am
  #12  
Acidity
 
Join Date: Aug 2022
Programs: AA Executive Platinum (Oneworld Emerald)
Posts: 135
Originally Posted by TRAVEL4SCUBA
Hard to say, but I think the bar was simply set too low. I totally cheated the system and first one to admit, the bar is set too low. They need to revamp this or they are going to lose lucrative customers. I took one flight, several hotel stays and lots of credit card spend and hit EXP in essentially 8 weeks.
I'm not sure AA would agree with you that you "cheated" the system. They've been very open about how they're very happy to have CC warriors (such as yourself) gain status in that way. And they make a lot of money off of selling RDMs/LP to partners for more than people redeem them for (I just redeemed 60k miles for an AC membership worth $450, so .75cpm).

You also have to remember, the EXP who flies 4 times a year doesn't impact frequent fliers all that much since they fly so infrequently - the metric that matters for upgrades and boarding groups etc isn't the number of EXPs, it's the number of EXP-segments flown. 1 EXP who flies 100 segments a year is roughly equivalent to 50 EXPs who fly 2 segments a year.

That said, I do think the gap between EXP and CK (and the corresponding tiers on UA/DL) is too large, and AA is probably going to look to move the elite tiers to be a bit more balanced in that way. I've seen times where GAs called group 1 and it took 5 minutes to board, and then they called groups 2 and 3 together because there were so few PlatPros + Plats; that's clearly much too top heavy.

Edit: Also worth noting that UA's announcement for 2024 qualification today made it easier to qualify using CC spend (though still more difficult than AA), so UA also at least seems to want to encourage more CC spend.

Last edited by Acidity; Nov 8, 2022 at 3:32 pm
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