yyz-den I was not offended nor bothered by your opinion. I just didn't understand it. When you said - am I missing something I thought you might really have not known that you could get status this way. In reading your post, you sounded incredulous (now I realize sarcastic) that there would be such a possibility - so it has nothing to do with you opinion, just how I read your post. For me the value of achieving lifetime gold (and hopefully platinum), is that when I finally use my FF miles for awards ( my AA miles are my 401K for travel), I will still have status on those flights - because if I fly a lot on awards tickets I won't be earning enough to achieve status. While I have platinum and before I achieve lifetime platinum I prefer to pay for a ticket - as long as the price is reasonable. I am using an award ticket to Puerta Vallarta at the end of Sept because the fares remained over $500, which, for the amount of miles I would get was worth the 30,000 miles.

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DtG