kgerickson99

I'm lifetime gold and PLAT year to year. "Gold" status isn't worth sacrificing any other program miles for. 80% of the gold benefits were free to everyone 5 years ago. The risk was that AA would eliminate the program, not make it reasonably difficult to obtain. Your better off just adding an additional overseas trip every year and go on a year to year basis until you reach the 1mm.

UNHBuzzard

Now if I don't meet the conditions above, is there any way to mine miles out of UA/CO over to AA with a similar (albeit, poor) exchange rate?

ItsAllRelative

I don't think anyone's mentioned the ability to ShareAAMiles. Theoretically, if 2 people who were looking to hit LT status, person A can transfer 15K miles to person B. Person B can transfer 15K miles back to person A. Each person spends $180 with a net gain of 0 miles, but lifetime miles will be 15K miles higher. Not that I want to spend $180 for 0 miles, but an idea for those who are close to the threshold.

FLgrr

You don't need to move your birthday, just buy whatever you can early enough to post before dec 1. So buy gift cards and generate credit card charges now. I am hoping to find a neighbor with the cash in hand to let me pay their HOA on my card. Not likely but I can dream.

ORD-TGU

This is a "gold rush" and we all know what happend after the last gold rush.

If a person does not qualify year to year gold status, then that person does not fly enough to take advantage of the benefits offered, but at the same time, that person will spend a lot of $$ upfront to become Lifetimegold.

I am brainstorming how to start a business and become rich with this business model, have my customers prepay a lot of $ for the promise of future benefits with no guarantee that I may keep the business running in the future and I can change it as I please.

Please PM me for any ideas.

rmc1

But you are limited to 40k miles per calendar year unless you jumped on the promotion that ended earlier this year that let you get up to 100k per calendar year.

azepine00

Not sure why you think so. The benefits difference between no status and gold is far more meaningful than a difference between gold and plat.

Elite check in boarding, no baggage fees, ability to earn and use stickers, no fees for last minute award bookings (for us as a family of 4 that's $300 per trip), premium seats etc.

Plat benefits are useful if you travel a lot (lounge access and extra mileage) but then you should be plat through normal qualification anyways...

jaf

I'm at ~830K miles. My business travel days are over, and going forward, I will probably travel a few times a year for holidays. I have close to 300K SPG points sitting in my account that for whatever reason I haven't used. (my vacations tend to be to visit family, i have a small child and staying in hotels is difficult, when i do use points i often end up using marriott). I can use half my SPG points to make 1MM status. This is my last chance, the exchange rate for SPG is favorable, and I can always replenish those with cc spend.

For me, the little things about Gold - skipping the lines at security, priority boarding so I can get my bag in the overhead before everyone else, make a big difference. I can think of 2 instances off the top of my head where having status allowed me to make a flight I was going to miss, or salvage a trip during an airline strike while a planeful of people waited in line behind me. Plus, I get a bunch of extra AA miles I can use for more free trips.

For me, i'm not spending anything extra - just reallocating my resources. Of course, there's no guarantee of what will happen to Gold in the future - worse cas, it goes away permanately. It's all an unknown. What is known is that I have a chance to reach 1MM status now, and if don't do it know I"ll never get it. I have the resources to do it, and it's not going to really cost me anything extra out of pocket. The alternative if I don't do it now, is that for the next couple of decades, every trip I take on AA (often times during the holidays) will be that much less convenient without Gold status.

dayone

A Republican presidential campaign.

aktchi

I basically feel that if you fly enough to enjoy those benefits you should qualify year by year anyway. However, this thread is about LT status and I do fee that 1MM requirement for Gold is overbloated and not worth all the trouble some are considering. Keep your money in your pocket, keep your Starpoints with SPG; that's where they are most useful.

clockhand

......

alan19

For those of you trying to top off, or get as close as possible before D-Day, please consider donating to charity for miles. Strictly speaking, I know the cpm is not great, but if you factor in taxes and the benefit of your donation to others, I say it's not bad.

http://www.aa.com/i18n/AAdvantage/ea...ities/main.jsp


Thanks,
Alan

oldpenny16

I'm running to that link now. Thanks!

A reminder to get the AA miles for a charity donation you need to do it online so far as I know. The posting time is usually fairly quick.

ScroogeMcFlyer

Keep in mind that only a small portion of your donation will be tax deductible.

It says on the website:

For charitable deduction purposes, each mile is valued at 2.75 cents per mile if fewer than 6,000 miles are awarded and 2.5 cents per mile if 6,000 or more miles are awarded.

Donate $1000 - (10,000*0.025 = $250) = $750 is deductible.
If you assume 28% tax savings = $790 effective cost for 10,000 miles... or about 7.9cents per mile.

brock256

Of course, if you can make a donation that you would be willing to make anyway, then your actual cost is only the difference of 0.28*$250 = $70 in lost tax savings. That makes your cost per mile a mere 0.7 cents. That makes this a pretty dandy benefit, if you are a supporter of these charities.