Originally Posted by
ILuvParis
The nice thing about AA, at least for people who are not rabid fliers, is that you can get lifetime Gold on AA and there is no similar lifetime plateau on UA. As to it being easier on American to reach lifetime Platinum, it probably is for most people, but if you get almost all your miles from flying and seldom qualify for 100% bonuses because you don't fly that frequently, it's probably easier to qualify on UA.
If you "seldom qualify for 100% bonuses" on those airlines, you average at most 40,000 or so miles per year. At that rate it would take a quarter-century to qualify on UA if, as also posited, "you get almost all your miles from flying." Granted, that's less than the 40 years it would take on AA (with the 25% first-tier mileage bonus counting toward the higher figure of 2MM there), but to most people those are both far longer planning horizons than they want to work with.