Originally Posted by dayone
Depends on your defintion of "rare." My memory is that EXP has been around for about 10 years. To make it in any year is, by design, limited. Four years, although not exclusive, does put you in a very limited group of flyers. I now that ther will be people who will say they have made it every year (e.g., ChuckDoc), just as there are people with 10M+ miles. Still, achieving some level of multi MM and muliple years of EXP is only accomplished by a select, and somewhat "rare," group...or least it makes me feel good to think so.
Do the numbers. There are about 20-30,000 EXPs in any given year. Most of them have it because of recurring travel patterns, so suppose 2/3 of them requalify the next year. After four years, 8/27 of them (about 7,000 people) will have been EXP all four years. Since the program has been in existence 8 years, you have the initial cohort plus about 8,000 new EXPs each year to replace the third that didn't make it. Those who first earned status in any of the program's first four years have had the opportunity to have been EXP for four years. The total works out to about 15,000 four-year EXPs, more or less, depending on your assumptions. This group grows by about 2,500 people each year.
I agree that these tend to be AA's best customers, it's a small fraction of the millions of AAdvantage members let alone all AA passengers, but I can't call it "rare." No group this size is going to get extra-special treatment. If you want an exclusive club, you'll have to look somewhere else.