Originally Posted by MikeShores
I've been a member here, but I have never been in the position to actually become a FF. In February next year, I will be starting a new job which will require me to travel extensively (every weekend for 36 weekends). Living in Austin and going to both coasts and points in-between, both AA and CO have pretty good coverage. There are two instances in the entire schedule when CO gets me about 50 miles closer to my destination than AA, but that doesn't really matter. Doing the rough estimation, on AA I will accumulate 104,370 EQM's and at least 138 EQP's. Total mileage would be around 195,000. On CO, I would end up with 114,136 EQM's and at least 151 EQP's. Total mileage is around 210,000.
How long do you think you might be doing this?
AA no only has lifetime Gold (at 1 million miles) and liftetime Plat (at 2 million miles), but unlike any other airline that has lifetime status, those are based on miles from all sources (base miles from flying, class of service bonuses on flying, elite bonuses on flying, other bonuses on flying, hotel/car rental/credit card miles whether earned directly or transferred from points, AAdvantage Dining miles, pudding miles, etc, etc). I'm not sure if CO even has lifetime elite at all, but if so, only from either "base" miles (paid actual miles flown) or EQMs. Since as an AA Plat, for example, you'd earn a 100% bonus on each mile flown, just for calculations sake, if you actually flew 195,000 you'd earn 390,000 minimum from flying alone (even more if there were any other bonuses), which means you'd be lifetime Elite in no more than 2.5 years and lifetime Plat in no more than 5 years. (Sorry, there is no lifetime EXP.) That'd be nice to have years from now if your flying ever falls back severely, or if you find after a few years you want to steer much of your flyihg to CO but still keep some of it on AA. (If you do CO first but don't get to lifetime status, you won't have nearly as much to show for it if you later decide to switch mostly to AA but still want to use CO some.)