This would certainly make accruing EQM (or whatever they are called now) much more difficult, even for big spenders. It's interesting that they are increasing the miles needed for the upper status tiers at the same time they are making it harder to accrue miles. I can only guess the intent is to drive spend on the credit cards to top off mileage, but it certainly dissuades actual flying on AS. I know all the money is in rewards programs these days and not flying, but this still seems surprising if this is what they end up actually doing.