AA Lifetime Status / Million Miler program - discussion, speculation (consolidated)
 

I have about 400k AA miles. I am not sure about my US balance but I'd guess something close to (but below) 1 million.

If AA is keeping the million miles program, it seems pretty clear they'd have to combine US miles, right?

Million Miles status (with combined US/AA miles)
 

Lifetime miles erased! I flew USAir and prior to that PSA almost exclusively for many years until they eliminated their Intra-California service. After that, I moved to AA with few and far between flights to PHX on US. With over 2 million AA miles,I WAS excited that these lifetime miles would soon be combined...or so I thought. I sent an email to DM requesting my total lifetime miles and the answer was 0! They stated that "lifetime" miles start over at zero if your account goes dormant. Mine went dormant in 2010 after no miles posted for 3 years.

That's unfortunate, but that's not really the OP's question...

I would assume that US and AA lifetime mileage balances would be combined.

My intention was to point out the fact that there are other considerations then simply if "lifetime" miles will be combined or not.

Does the US LT counter only include BIS miles or does it include all miles (status bonus miles, credit card spend miles, etc)? AA moved from the latter to the former a couple of years ago, making it harder to gain LT or advance LT status.

If US is able to distinguish between BIS miles (and not BIS miles) accumulated since the time that AA made this change, the combination (or presumed combination) for that period may only include BIS miles. If they can't distinguish, well.....then it's time to earn some US miles quickly ;)

BIS Only
 

Here's the information US provided in response to my "lifetime" miles inquiry:

US Airways lifetime flight miles are accumulated from the start date of your Dividend Miles account as long as your account remains active. Only credited flight miles on US Airways owned and operated flights (this includes previous flight miles on PSA, Piedmont, and America West) count toward Million Miler status. Bonus miles, preferred mileage bonus, class of service bonus miles and flights on partner airlines do not count.

My US account long since lapsed (in the 90's was a big flyer on them) and had gone dormant as well. And this response was the same one I received - solely in regards to an inquiry based on what the 'lifetime' amount will be in anticipation of the merger.

Probably about 300K or so would be my guess on US.

They might do a one-time re-build of US mileage (there are probably a number of people that left US and went to AA) but then again they might not. In both the UA/CO mergers as well as the DL/NW mergers a lot of legacy flown miles on the lifetime counter popped up once my accounts were linked. Frankly, I was surprised in both instances.

Who knows when we get to the linkage point with AA/US.

My US account from the 90s (I wasn't a big flyer at all back then, on any airline) went dormant long ago. When I tried to find it to credit a flight earlier this year, the (very friendly) US phone agent couldn't even find me in the system and said my long-dormant account likely wasn't even transitioned to the new IT system (which we know to be SHARES) following the US/HP merger. No great loss for me though, I can't imagine that old account's MM counter would have totaled more than 10K BIS miles.

Same here! :mad: When I lived in AZ, MD, OH, and CA, I flew a lot on US (and America West), then moved to China for years (then to Korea for more years) so no chance to fly US. When I realized this, I was told that all my earlier miles (including lifetime miles) were gone forever. I had to get a new DM account, starting at zero.

More OT: when DL and NW merged, my lifetime miles were combined; when CO and UA merged, the same. So, I suspect that there will be a 1:1 conbination of US and AA miles.

The big question is parity at time of conversion. Lifetime US miles are more restricted than lifetime AA miles.
There is a precedent in the CO-UA merger.
CO had an expansive definition of lifetime miles, which was basically on EQMs, including class of service bonuses, DEQM promotions, credit for travel on partner airlines, etc., while UA's definition was essentially BIS miles on UA metal only.
Post merger, the historic UA lifetime miles were uplifted on a one-time basis to match CO's definition, the miles consolidated, and then the combined program switched to the lifetime BIS basis. For historic UA flyers it represented a one-time bump-up so that their more-restricted miles are now counted equally to the historic CO flyers. And thereafter, everyone is on equal footing.
There were some major quibbles with losing some of the perks previously part of the UA lifetime program (lifetime Club access) but on the other hand, new perks were introduced (matching status for a spouse).
The best thing coming out of the combined program - at the 4MM level, lifetime GS status.
I hope they combine the miles using AA's much more generous formula than US's. And I hope they also provide more meaningful lifetime status benefits, say EXP at 3MM and Concierge Key at 4MM.

When TWA Aviators and AAdvantage accounts were combined, AAdvantage accounts did reflect Aviators miles counting towards MM status with AA.

However, since others in this thread have reported that US has responded that BIS miles only will count toward MM status, I would not expect MM status from all account activity to count towards MM status with AAdvantage once both accounts are combined.

If it MM status happens with all combined miles, it's a nice jesture to those loyal to both airlines.

If MM status happens only for BIS miles amongst combined accounts, then it's a nice jesture to existing AAdvantage MM status customers that have had to play by BIS only counting since December 2011 [with the exception of those that jumped on the Citi Executive offer in December 2011].

It is a bit more complicated than that. There is currently parity in the AA and US systems for counting MM. Both use BIS miles only.

You are absolutely correct though that for years AA's MM counter included elite bonus miles, credit card miles, promotion bonus miles, AAdvantage shopping miles, etc, etc, everything. That changed in summer 2011 when AA moved to the BIS miles only.

So at this point, we have 2.5 years of 'BIS only' parity (and by the time merging occurs perhaps 3.5 years of parity). It could get quite complicated indeed to calculate an uplift amount only for US miles prior to summer 2011 while not uplifting US miles earned summer 2011 and later.

(If all US miles are uplifted, than AA miles from summer 2011 onward would have to uplifted as well to maintain parity)

My million miler lifetime miles on AA is about 400k, and approximately 550k on US, although i was told in 2003 that my US total was about 700k. Assuming the lower number, I'll hit million mile status in about a years time assuming they merge totals one for one.

Except it's stated upthread that US does not even credit BIS miles on partner metal for MM proposes, whereas AA does. So while the disparity is nowhere near what it would have been had AA still credited all sources of miles, there is still slight disparity.

Cheers,
LBBZman