Originally Posted by
cova
I think AA should have done something more complicated to access the MM.
Perhaps - set max. starting amount based on age - assuming you exceed these levels.
Say
Max of 2 MM to start if under 30 years old.
Max. of 2.5 MM to start if 31 to 40 years old.
Max of 3 MM to start if 41 to 50
Max of 3.5 MM to start if 51 to 60
Max of 4MM to start if 61 to 70
Max of 4.5mm to start if 71 to 80.
Max. of 5mm to start if 81+ which is LT EXP.
And likely make it graduated within those levels. - so 50K Miles added for each year from the bottom age of the group.
These would keep young people with large MS and churn from instant status.
And all those people that got lots of 100K bonus for CC which used to count too.
I expect that could run into some legal challenges on the basis of age discrimination (though I'm not a lawyer). People could have started their FF journey with AA at various ages.
There was/is no one, simple, 100% equitable way to assign the million miler thresholds due to program history. Some people came from US, some from AA. Some pre-merger AA people got a lot of LT miles under the pre-2011 program, some got a few, some got little, some got none. Unless AA is going to go back and recalculate all those balances (and I doubt they even have the retained data to do so) then AA is just going to have to draw the best line in the sand they can. I suspect that line has been drawn based on AA's metrics of current membership at each LT tier. If those metrics change over time, perhaps the thresholds will as well.