Originally Posted by cigarman
Systemwides are useless when you can't redeem them. That's the problem with the lack of AA metal. TWO count them... TWO whole cities you can use your systemwides to in Asia, and 6 1/2... in Europe. That is Pathetic! Sure you can fly Cathay etc. But not with the system wide. And the flagship lounge on it's best day can't touch a good Presidents club. A P club has FREE alchol, Free internet and are nice new and modern. Flagship lounges are not even in the same hemisphere. I am AA EXP PLAT... I fly them almost three times a week. And they are garbage. Only advantage AA has is award redeption, and that won't help the original poster.
Cigarman, I know you travel a lot...but I think somewhere you've missed something.
First off, in the comparison, since the OP would already be flying in J, AA offers the ability to upgrade to F to 2 (actually 3) destinations in Asia and "6 1/2" in Europe. CO offers F to zero, zip, nada, none of their destinations. In other words, for the OP, there's no upgrade opportunity on CO.
Second of all, the eVIPs can also be useful for personal travel. My wife and I have used mine to upgrade from inexpensive coach fares to business on at least a significant portion (domestic and over the ocean) of the flight. On CO, that upgrade would have cost, what -- the coach fare, PLUS $900, PLUS miles. Not to mention the fact that CO won't clear upgrades at the gate -- so even with empty seats up front you might be sitting in the back.
Now you might say that you would always use miles for personal travel, but sometimes you just *have* to be somewhere at a specific date, so it's a lot easier to buy the cheap coach fare and waitlist for the upgrade so you KNOW you'll be there.
And on the Coupon Connection, you can easily find people willing to trade 30,000 miles per eVIP -- so I think if you wanted to find someone who would trade, say, 2 business class awards (which are a LOT easier to find on AA) for 6 eVIPs for your vacation, you could do that easily. And many people on flyertalk DO value the ability to redeem miles much easier than one can with CO.
And now let's go to the topic of the Flagship Lounges. You may be EXP, but based on your description, clearly, you've not been in an FL. Unlike the Admiral's Club, the FL has not only free self service drinks and alcohol (meaning you don't have to tip anyone like in a PC) but it's got significant food. Food as in shrimp, cheese (and "cut your own from this hunk" not little preprocessed hunks of "cheese food"), various hot foods (such as egg rolls, dim sum or even sushi at times) to boot. Oh, and desserts as well. Again, as I said, it's not CX's lounge in HKG, or MH's in KUL, but it's far above any regular PC or Admiral's Club.
Steve