I think it is actually the opposite. Most of the Mosaics spent a lot more than $4-5,000/year and got no extra benefits. Now they can move up to higher levels and get more benefits without having to fly 10 long flights and/or 14 total flights to get bonus miles plus they can select other benefits. Remember that Mosaic was started back when nearly all the offerings were low cost coach flights. Spending $4-5,000 on $39 trips to Florida was very difficult before. Even with Mint's introduction, you had to fly quite a few $399 LAX-NYC/BOS flights to reach Mosaic. Now there is the potential to get Mosaic with as little as one flight in a premium cabin on AA/B6.

The airline has changed and those only spending $4,000 and doing 30 low cost flights in a year are no longer anywhere close to being the top spenders. Not only that, once that tier was reached there was no incentive to keep spending. There was also no real incentive to use the credit card either if you were not spending $50,000/year.

Now, say with $20,000/year credit card spend plus the 20 point boost after reaching Tier 1, you can spend $6,000 on B6/AA and get to Tier 2. That seems very reasonable and at Tier 2 if you are not going to get to the next Tier you can still claim the 15,000 bonus.

The airline and the US market in general has changed and so must the airline. Also if partner reciprocity is to be expected in the future why should somebody spending $4-5,000/year on a combination of B6/AA flights get top tier on AA or any other airline? It would also not be fair to those spending $20,000 to end up with the lowest status on AA or any other partner. Most airlines have at least 4 tiers now. As they combine with NK and expand other airline partnerships, there have to be realistic tiers which match up with others. All things considered, I think it is pretty fair.