Accuracy of AA.com counters
 

There are a number of threads out there detailing that on Iberia and BA flights, people's AA.com counters increment by 500 q-points/q-miles even if actual mileage accrual is less than 500. I have noticed this myself as well.

Well, I enrolled in a Platinum challenge, and I had a BOS-LHR RT scheduled with a nested LHR-MAD on IB. My final LHR-BOS leg should get me to 10,117. I get back from my trip, wait for miles to post, see online counter go to 10,117. Wait for Ed McMahon to stop by with the prize patrol to give me my Plat card and luggage tags. I wait a few days, nothing happens. I call AA and the woman says to me that I only have 9717 q-points. The IB flights apparently only gave me 300 q-points per segment on their internal systems.

It ended well as I managed to get another rep to bump me up to Plat, but I'm still a bit peeved as I missed out on about 2400 miles for the Plat bonus on what should have been my qualifying flight.

Anyone else see this happen before? Is this something I need to be aware of as I'm trying to re-qual for Plat at the end of the year?

Could be as flight was booked in a low fare class - LHR-MAD is about 774 miles so 30% would be 232 EQM with only .5 or 1.0 EQPoints depending on the class.
However there is a minimum of 300 EQP for Iberia - see

http://www.aa.com/apps/AAdvantage/Vi...artnersContent

Right, I understand that (though technically that page doesn't address minimum q-points, it only talks about minimum earned mileage). But I believe the consensus on this board is that the minimum q-points/q-miles is 500 because our online counters increment by 500. The experience I seem to have is that AA keeps a separate counter that is considered the true counter, and this counter only increments by 300 for IB flights earning <= 300 miles.

On AA routes the minimum points / miles is 500 but on Iberia it is 300 / 300 same as the discount BA flights internal UK - if I fly deep discount Bristol - Glasgow (318 actual miles) I only get 25% - minimum of 125 miles and 125 Q points.

The Q points are on the miles you earn - so you only earnt 300 so at 1EQM/miles it would give you 300 EQMs or if you were very deep discount at 0.5 EQM it would have been less.

It does state on the page I linked above that there is a minimum of 300 - and the Q points always relate to the actual miles posted (not flown in the case of minimums on other airlines).

I think you're missing the point. I understand perfectly well how things are supposed to work. When you fly BRS-GLA, does your YTD Elite Qualifying Points counter increase by 125 or 500? I think the experience of most people is that it increases by 500. But at the same time, AA seems to have an internal counter only available to AAdvantage reps that will only increase by 125. Hence the title of this thread questioning whether the AA.com counters are accurate.

Personally, I've never heard any reference to this and personally I don't think it's the case.

I didn't want to start a separate thread on this, but my Q-points on aa.com are 4 more than they should be. Yes, 4 ... not a big deal ;). But I have a very accurate spreadsheet that keeps track of my Q-points and Q-miles, and I wonder why AA's system can't be at least as accurate as my little Excel database!

Before all the mathematicians jump in, I'm a math major, an accounting and finance major, and a CPA. It's not a rounding error; I'm already rounding UP.

Have done BRS-GLA and BRS-EDI - and both times have only been given 125 EQM and 125 EQP (each way)

Maybe the challenge counters run differently? I guess they need a separate counter for that so it's possible they coded the two slightly differently? I guess one way to find out would be to call AA and ask them how many YTD q-points they think I have. But there's definitely something strange going on. The 10,117 I see online is definitely correct (I had 0 q-points for the year before the challenge) if you get min 500 q-points/segment. And the 9,717 number she quoted me is correct if you get 300 q-points/segment min on IB.

UPDATE: just called AA. The rep confirms that she sees I have 10,117 q-points for the year and accrued 9717 q-points on the challenge. She is equally befuddled.

Have you flown any BA flights that left the UK? I flew LHR-PRG last year, got 165 flight miles each way, but my online q-points and q-miles each increased by 500 each way. The consensus I've gathered from extensive searching is that this seems to generally be the case:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=380654
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=364628
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=364628

Though the second thread is interesting because StewieMac says that he did a Plat challenge with lots of BA ex-Lon flights (which contradicts my experience). And the third thread is interesting because medmanflyer says he spoke with a CSR who said that for the Plat challenge, his LGA-ORD RT only earned 733 points total, not 1000. I think I give up trying to understand what's going on. I'll just chalk it up to gremlins in the system or something.

Out of curiosity...where does rounding come into play here? Did you round up a fraction of a mile? :)

It comes into play when you get .5x or 1.5x Q-point credit when you fly an odd number of miles.

You can't see me right now, but I'm figuratively retreating back into a cave to hang my head. This is what happens when I read flyertalk late at night.

Apologies. :D

No problem and no offense taken! :)

Hay vasant, stop playing with numbers and get a life...oh, sorry, I'm late on that :p.

(From another who's been accused of being without one...hey, I'm trying...)

Cheers.