I don't care anymore as I have already hedged my bets and use the Barclay Arrival card. Will cancel my Citi AA card this summer when the AF is due regardless of whatever retention bonus they offer.

My shopping is through the Barclay portal as well, from now on the only airline miles I earn are BIS only. Just don't trust these programs anymore, will redeem my Qantas award as soon as mileage balances are combined and I can get at least business both ways.

I will try to stay on AA if price is comparable, otherwise I will just go with best price and routing and if I happen to have enough miles for an award well then it comes around, but what these airlines have said with these revenue programs is they only care about how much we spend, so fine, I will make price my only factor as well.

Wonder if this will be a net loss for the airlines if people suddenly see co branded cards as not worth the effort anymore and just go with another card that is unaffiliated? In trying to please high spenders only these airlines might have killed the golden goose revenue stream of banks buying miles.

Only TWO guarantees in life -- death and taxes !!

I am sure the AA program will eventually become revenue based. Use it to your best abilities while you can and then adjust as needed.

Guarantee? What does that even mean? A refund of your fare if they switch to a revenue program?

No, the consensus it that new AA will be a fool to not look carefully at switching to revenue-based miles earning after the dust settles.

But since that will be some time from now, they'll have more data about how DL and UA have been doing with it, and also more data about whether them doing it differently than DL and UA has brought them more business.

So what their final decision will be is less certain. But that they'll be considering revenue-based earning is certain.

AA hasn't traditionally copied everything regarding FFPs that the other airlines did*. But then AA of the future is part pre-merger AA and part pre-merger US, so predictions based on the past are harder than ever were.

* Remember, DL and UA went to spend requirements for status before they went to revenue-based mileage earning on flights. AA hasn't even coiped the spend requirement for status yet. But AA had a sort of a spend option all along (Elite-Qualifying Points), while I'm not sure if DL and UA had that (before going to spend requirements for status). Which makes it complicated to predict changes at different airlines when the different airlines come from different starting points.

Certainly not. Read what people have written. But take all this "it's inevitable" talk with a grain of salt.

It is true that airline managements in the US are not much afflicted by vision or inventiveness and tend to imitate each other. But it is also true that the DL and UA program changes create a big capture opportunity for AA, and AA knows it.

As this poster and most others well know, UA has shed HVFs like crazy since 2012, and not just because of terrible service and reliability. Lots of good customers are shopping their loyalty around. And if the economy tanks, and the remaining majors have to actually campaign for customers, all bets are off.

Like William Goldman said about Hollywood, nobody knows anything. If AA goes revenue-based, it's great news for AS, B6, VX, and WN, as a whole middle tier of frequent flyers will likely give up the FF addiction and start actually choosing airlines that are pleasant and convenient to fly. And if AA stands pat it'll pick up that middle tier and give its competitors the kick in the teeth they have coming.

You forgot the third one... crap food on the new AA.

Well UA will lose my a lot of my flying due to them moving to spend based AND having ...... operations. So not spend based alone, but combo of spend based without any positives to justify it.

I am moving to Delta who has spend base as well, but Delta has much, much, much better operations and trying out AA to see what is is like. Almost 50% of my UA flights this year were delayed. Some due to just the way SFO works weather wise, but a lot were also just bad management and mechanical. I can't remember the last time a Delta flight I was on had a mechanical delay. The 747s UA flies APAC have tons of mechanical delays. At some point its not just spend but operations. If you are travelling for business you need to get places on time. If they cannot even do that then its over.

Not a guarantee - sometimes they forget to cater

I have had a few hits and misses. Flew to MBJ in Dec and the beef was pretty good but on the way back, the chicken was nothing to write to home about.

Have a flight to MAD next week and I wonder what sort of suprise awaits me !!

Guarantee? Mr. Parker said there'd be no switch to revenue-based this year, iirc.

I can guarantee change of some kind. Remember the April 7 2014 "massacre"?

There's your guarantee, in black and white.

Other than that, speculation.

AA will almost certainly switch to revenue-based earning, but IMHO the airline will avoid the shortsighted (and JV/partner carrier-hostile) Delta/United models and instead follow the rest of the world's legacies in earnings based on fare booking class.

What AA needs to realize (but probably won't), is that many HVCs actually care about things like service, attitude, and all the little touches that make the experience better (all the things that have been eroding at AA/US). That's part of why they're willing to pay higher fares. You can't keep cutting service, food, benefits, etc. unless you are just willing to go after the LVCs who will accept whatever gives them the cheapest fare.

It can't happen soon enough for me.

They already have a couple of built built in tools: EQP, and the ability to use that to multiply Base miles for various yields.

The 2015 bonus miles program is already rewarding for revenue.

E.g. For EP / EXP /CP:
As EP, get all the class of service and status bonus miles, but if you fly a 3,000+ flight in FAPJRDC earn yet another 12,000 bonus RDM; fly like a cheapo in I or Z, only 1,000 bonus miles for you.

So you can spend for the band 4 anytime J MIA-CDG at 950,000 miles.

This one is spectacular, JD. I just returned from a 72 hour ICN-HKG-DFW-BOS paid F roundtrip (actually business requirement, not an MR, though it could have been) on which 74,366 miles have posted so far, and I'm still awaiting posting for the HKG/ICN segments.