So close to EXP... yet.. so far away?
 

Hi all,

Well I went through all the threads and noticed no one asked this question, despite all the talk about MR's. I lived in Spain for 5 years and in my last year there I was 'given' Platinum on IB (OneWorld Emerald) even though I didn't deserve it. I was 500 elite qualifying points short (needed 6,500) and they just gave it to me anyway. Now I am in the same situation on American back in the US. I have PLAT on AA and about 90,000 EQP's. I will maintain quite a demanding biz travel schedule in December but at the end of the day I might be a couple thousand points short of the magic 100,000 number. Do I HAVE to do MR's to make up the difference, or will AA take pity on me (or take cash) to give me EXP status for 2007?

Funny no one asked this question before! Cheers.

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

Cash? No, unless you're using it to buy a ticket for travel before 31 Dec 2006. ;)

Pity? Unlikely, unless you earned those 98k miles on purely paid F tickets and even then it might be a stretch.

You best be mileage running. :D

The Unofficial Guide to the FT-AA Forum(and new member information) in the sticky at the top of the page has great info for new members. Listed there is this thread about status qualification and requalification. It has a lot of good info for you. Amazingly there are one or two people in the same or similar position as you are. The short answer: What Spiff said - do a mileage run. 10,000 EQP's (=6,667 F miles, 10,000 Y/B miles, or 20,000 discount Y miles) isn't an amount that AA is gonna grace you with, it simply ain't gonna happen. But if you decide not to fly let us know how it comes out in February when they decide.

Run, run, run! Good luck. ^

FWIW, I looked like I was going to be about 400 miles short and did not assume that I would get any "gifts."

Wow. No one asked the "I'm X points/miles short of Y status...will AA give it to me". Unthinkable. I guess you didn't go through very thoroughly :).

But, no, they won't, as has been answered many times.

Cheers.

Agreed -- thanks to this week's weather problems at DFW, my qualifying DFW-LAX-SFO flights got rerouted to DFW-SFO, making me about 190 miles short of EXP.

I called AAdvantage and they said they would not give me original routing credit due to my reroute, but that I could call to make a request in February that I qualify for EXP due to involuntary weather routing on my qualifying flight. She made it a point to mention that nothing was guaranteed, of course.

So another quick call to the PLT desk (and 18 hours of delays later), I got my original routing back and finished up my last LAX-SFO flight. :D

I think the agent you spoke with may have been mistaken. I have had original routing credit due to weather reroutes on quite a few occasions.

One in particular, I had decided to fly out of EWR instead of JFK because NY was expecting storms later in the day. Well, later I couldn't figure out why I was a few miles short of my requal (it was a very tight requal). Well I figured out EWR is 19 miles closer to DFW than JFK is. Well, I wrote AA and they credited me for my original routing.

I believe, however, they only do this for weather or other invol reroutes, not voluntary reroutes.

I was 124 miles away from Plat. this year. I called yesterday to beg for consideration and talked to a lovely rep. She was very understanding, comped me the 124 miles and immediately upgraded my status through Feb. 2008!

Thanks AA!

Could be -- I called both Reservations and AAdvantage and both agents said the same, though they didn't really double-check with supervisors on anything.

My original DFW-LAX flight was cancelled, so I pretty much had to take the DFW-SFO flight, unless I decided to stay in DFW overnight (at my expense) and take a DFW-LAX-SFO trip the following day, which I did. So perhaps the existence of only one alternate arrangement on that night (which I didn't want to take) was why they wouldn't offer routing credit...

Hmm...try emailing customer service and see what that gets you. I've always submitted my original routing requests that way. I also typically state that I was involuntarily rerouted due to weather from my originally ticketed itinerary. Make sure you use the words involuntarily rerouted, and it should go through.

How many EQM's do you have?

Right now I have about 87,000 EQP's, 77,000 EQM's and 68 segments. If I'm going to make EXP it's going to have to be on points, not EQM's. So far I'm booked in on ORD-EWR-ORD-SEA-ORD at the end of this week, ORD-LGA-TPA-ORD next week and ORD-IAH-ORD the week after. Any ideas, will I still need to do an MR? Thanks.

It depends upon how many points the flights you just listed add up to. if it's 13,000 or more, then you will not need to do the MR. If it's less than 13,000, you will need additional flying.

Cheers.

Yeah, go figure :rolleyes:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=617938
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=527053
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=624910
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=621625
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=620194
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=612066

This will give you approx 8800 total miles, so much you will have to look at flying another 4200 before end of the year. That is if you have exactly 87,000 EQP's.

If you perhaps gave the exact number of EQP's I could have helped further, but anyhow I would expect that a ticket ORD-DFW-LAS-DFW-ORD would be available on many dates for around $200, if required Midweek overnight hotels in LAS are plentiful for under $50 before the 29th December.