chrisl137

Not anymore, but it's what drove the UA program to be what it is today, and is something AS has been making a visible effort to avoid letting dominate its program and force them into a revenue based program like everybody else.

I wouldn't put too much stock in what anybody's network looks like today in trying to divine their plans for post-covid and the next 5 years. This has been an unbelievable crunch on the airline industry, much, much worse than 9/11, and is potentially coupled with a major rearrangement of how businesses relate to where their employees live and when/where/why they travel for business. I was flying LAX-BOS pretty regularly pre-covid, and was doing it on UA before I switched to AS. UA had just recently made BOS a focus city before the pandemic, and now they don't have any non-stops between their LAX hub and their BOS focus city. It's basically down to AA, B6, and DL, with AS and UA having both dropped it for now.

If I wanted to put a pre-halloween scare into everybody, I might suggest that everything AS is doing right now is to smooth over the transition when they outright buy AA in early 2022.
They:
Joined OW, so they'll have that integration complete with the AS side of things
They're adding a 4th tier to make it easy to map the conversion of AAdvantage flyers to MP. The hinted at future 100K perks will be related to the AA integration, and they're scrubbing implementation of perks so they don't get too generous with the new influx of members from AA. There really wasn't much need for a 100K tier for the current AS, or even pre-covid AS.
They're cutting their flights that are already covered by AA - they won't even have to rearrange any flight schedules to integrate the two airlines.

pavo77

Long time Lurker, first time poster (guess I'm a newbie for this).

Have a question about segments for 100k. Do Alaska award flights count toward the 24 segments requirement in 2021 or do all 24 segments have to be paid flights? I'm 6 segments short (with ample miles) for the 100k status and was considering doing a 4 segment west coast trip (paid run) and wanted to change an already planned trip to an 2 segment award flight as the cost of the same flight would be high. Would the award flights count?

Flying for Fun

Congratulations on your first post. Award segments do not count. The flights must be eligible to earn miles/segments in Mileage Plan. The 24 segments required must be flown in 2021 so any carry-over segments from 2020 also do not count. If prices are high from your city you could use an award redemption to reposition yourself to a cheaper starting point and fly 2 revenue segments back home.

James

TravelingZoomer

You can also consider pay with miles + money

notquiteaff

It’s a bit annoying that premium fares don’t earn a segment bonus.

Erasmus

Actually, I applaud it. AS is trying to make the system less "gameable" so that people actually have to fly AS with some frequency to earn status--not just cherry pick low fares. Every airline needs to combat MRers, and I, for one (as a business traveller whose employer pays only for coach), much prefer this method to the EQD approach others have taken.

notquiteaff

Yeah, but for me (and others) every AS-only trip is basically two segments since I have to start with a Horizon segment to a hub. So for me 24 trips are just 6 roundtrips to somewhere. For many others it’s 12 roundtrips. Granted, I get to “enjoy” 60 mins of BIS time in a Q400 seat for half my segments, but if you have limited business or leisure travel opportunities, it helps.

And to be clear, I don’t think 24 segments is too high of a requirement in normal travel years for top tier.

WrightHI

Agreed. I don't really have a beef missing 100K because of the 24 segment requirement. This is a weird year and 100K doesn't look to be worth a lot for next year anyway. But when 100% of my EQM is AS and some of it is premium fares, I don't think I'm the customer that's gaming the qualification rules just because my miles flown skew toward longer segments.

Erasmus

As someone who gets most of their AS miles from trans-cons and HI flights, I'm right there with you, but 24 segments is at most 12 round trips---doesn't seem like much to ask for top tier status. We all know plenty of form denizens that fly SEA-FLL and the like for no other reason than to collect status miles as cheaply as possible, so AS has do to something to make those folks work for it, as they can't even be break even with the <$100 one-way AS collects for their first class seats.

Flying for Fun

SEA-FLL is longer than any HI flight from the Mainland, even longer than SEA-CUN. Yet 24 segments between SEA & FLL won't get you over 100K even with the 50% bonus. 24 segments seems like a lot but really isn't. It is just another "revenue" component of the AS pseudo-revenue frequent flyer program named "Mileage" Plan that shifts the revenue more towards AS. There has been a continual erosion of EQM earnings on Partner flights for years, the latest being the loss of the 10% COS Bonus on CX PE fares booked into E class. QF, just before that & LA before that & ..... The segments are easy considering all AS flights in the network are sub 2900 miles but attaining the 100K miles is more difficult for the same reason. Since partner EQM for discount Y is so poor there isn't any arbitrage for the dollars spent. As such, those denizens you speak of will spend more on AS if they really want the status, drop out at a lower tier or just bow out. 75K with 12 AS segments is easier to attain than 90K AS+Partner with no AS segment requirement.

I like the AS metal requirement and don't see the needed segments as onerous. It is a great strategy and eliminates those that never fly AS but bank their partner flights to Mileage Plan. They can still choose to do that, but without status, the Elite Bonus is lost, stripping out the value of AS banking. Some will argue that if they aren't flying AS they aren't taking away benefits & upgrades. While that is true, they were vying for the same award seats in Mileage Plan with the miles they banked including their Elite Bonus.

I also forecast that AS will sell more F seats outright as AA Elites will purchase F for the arbitrage in earning AAdvantage EQD based on a percentage of miles flown with their new alliance member & Partner and can do that domestically. Cheap F fares on long routes are attractive so perhaps those <$100 denizens won't be sitting in F SEA-FLL much longer.

I can easily argue that AA Executive Platinum is easier to attain than AS 100K despite the revenue component. You can even argue that it was easier than AS 75K. However, that would mean you would have to be loyal to AA. 😆 While AAdvantage does have some sweet spots, Mileage Plan is a better overall frequent flyer program, at least for now, and AS RDM are easy to accrue.

James

WrightHI

Yeah, I don't think I'm gaming the system, but I'm certainly benefiting from AS's Covid adaptations to hit a higher level of status than I normally do. I'll enjoy my couple of months of being top tier before 100K kicks in, and I'll enjoy being ahead of most of the crowd for the remainder of next year, but after that it's going to be back to MVPG at least most years (unless AS buys HA, which would be awesome for my travel).

DeltaFlyingProf

One thing I wonder is whether the International upgrade certificates on American Airlines are going to be as restrictive as the ones 75k got this year. Restricting to West coast gateways makes them fairly unappealing to me. I'd like to be able to upgrade from all the other gateways (DFW/ORD being the closest for me).

olouie

Finally did the calculation for my travel patterns and whats funny about the new setup is that it actually encourages me to credit international partners to AS then move my short hauls to AS. Easy and cheap to do west coast routes to hit that 24 segments ($30 fares SFO-LAX/SNA/etc super easy). In turn that will allow me to basically move most of my premium cabin north america flying to other airlines and get mid tier status there. They lose my premium business travel and get my short haul leisure travel which is fine with me since Im probably not AS target customer anymore.

Sadly based out of SFO there arent too many discount F fares to play arbitrage with anymore, but if I was based in SEA it would be tempted to book those and credit to AA for sure.

keitherson

Forget the west coast restrictions. LHR only to Europe??? I'm going to be peeved if I have to transit LHR again with its awful security and lines just to use any certs.

keitherson

I had to double check about SEA-CUN being shorter than SEA-FLL and I'm in shock 😆