I wasn’t sure where to post this, so mods can feel free to move it to a more appropriate thread.
I got a surprise email from AA yesterday, welcoming me to Gold status. I say “surprise,” because I ended the year about 2,400 LP’s short of qualifying for Gold.
I’m a UA 1K, so concentrate all of my travel on UA/*A. With Loyalty Points, I thought that I might have a shot at Gold via a combination of credit card spend and other mileage-earning schemes. I was about 2,400 LP’s short of Gold, and realized that I would owe a balance on a group trip to the Balkans which would be due in mid-Feb. Unfortunately, the travel coordinator was delayed in sending the invoice for the balance, and I missed the cutoff for my February statement close date by a few days. By the time the invoice came through, it was late Feb and I knew that I had missed my chance to earn Gold. But, since I haven’t flown AA, it wasn’t that big of a deal. I decided to still make the charge on my AAviator Red card, to get some LP’s for the next qualifying year. And, those LP’s are reflected in my 3/1/23-2/28-24 balance.
Today I received the following email from AA:
“You are a valued AAdvantage®
credit cardmember, and we know how important your rewards are to you.
With the completion of the first new status qualification year, we recognize that earning Loyalty Points through purchases made with your AAdvantage®
credit card is a new way of earning status. For the first time, your AAdvantage®
credit card statement closing date (regardless of when purchases are made) determines which year your Loyalty Points will count toward.
As a courtesy, we have posted a one-time deposit of the Loyalty Points you earned on purchases made between your February credit card statement closing date and February 28, 2023, the end of the 2022 AAdvantage®
status qualification year.
This means that for this year only, the Loyalty Points you earned through purchases on your credit card between your February statement closing date and the last day of February will not only count toward your 2023 status qualification, as they normally would, but also toward your 2022 qualification year Loyalty Point balance. Congratulations, as a result of this additional deposit, you have qualified for AAdvantage Gold®
status.
As a reminder, the status qualification year starts on March 1 and runs through the last day of February of the following year. For example, if your monthly AAdvantage®
credit card statement closes on March 5 (which includes purchases posted to your credit card account between February 6 and March 5), the Loyalty Points you earn on these purchases will count toward the new status qualification year after they post to your AAdvantage®
account, which may take up to 8-10 weeks after March 5, in this example.
You can view this one-time deposit in your AAdvantage® account under “Recent Activity.”
Thank you for being a loyal AAdvantage®
credit cardmember.”
And, being a true Flyertalker, my first thought was “What a missed opportunity for Flyertalkers to double dip!!!”
It’s nice to have another option where I have some status, however minor it may be. And, of course, now I will want to take AAdvantage of it.
