I was looking into AAdvantage, but with them do I need to be an elite member to be able to use miles for an upgrade? I would ideally like to have an OW FF program that I could collect points on the odd OW flight I take, and then use any points accumulated to upgrade my seats. I do not have much experience with seat upgrade rewards (since Aeroplan doesn't have this) but it seems like a very nice way to use miles.