Welcome to FT, jasman79!

AA also offers two ways to prepay for travel:

1. You can money into an account that you draw from over the year and get status immediately. (IIRC it's $5K for Gold, $10K for PLT and $25K for EXP.) The money can be spent only for your own personal travel on AA metal - no travel companions, no code-shares - so it's a bit limiting, and it's possible to earn the status by flying for way less $$ if one is so inclined.

2. You can buy an AAirpass, which doesn't confer status as such but provides many of its benefits while you earn it by flying. Again, an expensive way to go (about 50¢ per flown mile for economy travel, over $2,500 for BOS-SFO round trip, though it's not as bad versus regular fares on short flights) if you don't fit the target profile.

In general, each airline does its own thing. In addition, if you work for a large corporation, your travel coordinator might be able to pull strings the rest of us have never heard of. You might try to narrow things down to a small number of airlines that could potentially meet your needs, search their forums (fora?), and then post any remaining airline-specific questions in each one as need be.