I'm talking about the 2016 herd, inclusive of those qualifying within the first half of 2016 for EXP status benefits for all of 2017. Grow the herd first, then slaughter and fleecing the herd becomes easier. The eventual culling of the herd later happening in the manner you mention? I don't doubt it.

Appreciate your input. At the end of the day, I can't abandon AA. I'm just wondering if AA GLD + UA Silver is a better combination as both carriers have a strong presence near me and open the door for more fare options as the bulk of my travel is domestic. I just find a lot less value in AA PLT now than I used to. Hmmm...

That doesn't make much sense to me. It would effectively make EXP a similar level of difficulty to qualify for as DL Diamond, but with notably worse benefits. As opposed to the new program at AA now, where EXP has somewhat worse benefits than DL Diamond but is easier to obtain. I don't see the competitive benefit to AA in doing that.

I am Lifetime Gold and, for the first time in many years, I relied on that status last year rather than earning PLT or EXP. I found that AA Gold and the equivalent 25K levels on United (which I held last year) and Delta (which I hold this year) offer limited benefits beyond what you can get with a $95 airline branded credit card. These additional 25K level elite benefits are (in general):
- Ability to get an MCE/E+ seat within 24 hours of departure, if available.
- Domestic first class upgrades, on rare occurrences (non-competitive routes/days/times)

Basically everything else (free bag, priority boarding, etc) can be obtained with the credit card, so you have to weigh if the additional features of Gold status would be of substantial use or not.

There's an increase in RDM earning rate which, as many have pointed out, will be percentage wise higher going forward, though almost always lower in absolute terms than what it is today, due to it being based on fares.

I find that having some level of elite is better than none at all. So while I am a 1K at UA, I still strive to maintain Gold at AA. Being able to get preferred seating at 24 hrs is better than having to pay for it, and obtaining gold is not that difficult to do, especially when AA many times has better prices out of CLE than UA.;)

Fair point, I forgot to include the current 25% RDM bonus and the increased RDMs per $ in the new scheme.

+110K, the amount now for a one-way Cathay F Award.

... One of the many premium awards that were getting too easy to obtain, something AA could have gleaned just from reading this forum.

We saw this coming. This is why my wife and I both got US Air credit cards, recognizing those free miles would help offset future devaluations.

Remember, just a few years ago AA was in bankruptcy. There was some remote possibility of all AA miles becoming worthless. With the US Air consolidation AA has survived, but it is becoming more and more "US Air-like" as time goes on. We kind of assumed that would happen

Boards like this, and multiple websites that train and inform people to travel free shows that there are plenty of benefits in the airline FF programs. It's great as long as it lasts. This year we've used miles to travel together to This is $16,500 worth of travel for about $1,500 cash and about 500,000 miles on AA/Delta/United. It's actually kind of amazing that doing this is even possible at all. I'm not aware of any other industry that makes it possible to get so much product for so little cost.

Having LTG status we will use AA miles where prudent, which currently areWe are also building a home-based business that will allow us each to get AA business credit cards with the 50,000 mile bonus.

For a long time we flew AA exclusively, but this year began to redeem long-held Delta miles for domestic flights, since the Delta redemption rates for international flights are SkyMiles high. We've found that the Delta agents and flights have been tremendous, and actually more pleasant than even AA flights with Gold status. Of course we have a Delta credit card to get free luggage and priority boarding.

We've also found flying one-way on AA off-peak and one-way on Delta for 30,000 has worked to maximize off-peak AA benefits.

There's still lots of tremendous value and opportunity in all the FF programs, although it may take more work and strategy to find it. As several have mentioned, it may be time to be less exclusive to AA, and find the deals on any airline that work in your particular situation.

It's a wonder that they only give PLT 1 mile per dollar more than GLD. Flying 2x the amount of GLD should afford a bigger premium.

So now I need to figure out whether I settle for GLD for the coming year, buy up to PLT for $1199, or just use my MVP status on AS for basically the same perks on AA as GLD (minus being able to use 500-mile upgrade certs) and consolidate all my FF accrual to AS in 2016 so that I can hit MVPG which has (for now) tremendous perks.

No, they can't, which makes some of the 'ivory tower' attitude in this thread all the more mystifying.

I suppose we unwashed masses should vacate the thread and the program, so the expense account and jet set crowd don't have to hear our protests while they plunk down hard cash for their J/F tickets. :rolleyes: (sorry, but some posts in here do sound like that)

Many of those folks have earned their status, and they deserve the perks that come with it. No question there. But the airlines need the rest of us just as much as they need the high-rollers, and yet they've been doing everything they can to drive us away through mergers and FFP gutting. Or, perhaps worse, disincentive us to have any loyalty to anything other than lowest price.


/no, that's not a shot at every high tier person, to be clear
//just a general comment at some of the snarkier posts that have popped up recently

Has anybody tried a status match or status challenge? I'm Delta Silver Medallion, looking to get AA Platinum. I called months ago when I booked 15k miles worth of flights and was told I could enroll in the challenge at any time, called back last month and was told they were no longer offering challenges.

All good points. WRT SWU’s, I use them for TATL. When I drop to 4 from 8, this means I add (under current rules - I can’t find any proposed copay upgrade changes for late 2016 or 2017 ) $350/25k per leg. This means I drop $1400 and 100k miles for these trips, with EXP status getting me to at or near the head of the line for an upgrade. So if I spend $11-12k annually now, I add another $1.4k and shave 100k AAdvantage RDMs. In the end, it means 12% more cash out, but my RDMs still grow. Not as much as before beginning in late 2016 and maybe that account stays flat but still not bad. I can appreciate how this affects MRs but when I’ve done them I wasn’t the most efficient. I went somewhere I wanted to go instead of living in airports for 3 days.

I do think it’s prudent for AA to start reducing (or at least flatten the growth of ) its balance sheet issues with all the RDMs banked up. I rarely use them so that will change and I have no issues with that..

The challenge program was frozen/sunset effective September 23 through end of year with speculation that a new/revised program may be coming, but nothing has been announced. More here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...gram-come.html

The unwashed masses you are referring to generally aren't FTers. Remember that 50% of AA's revenue comes from the 83% of their pax that are flying once a year or less. That's not the FT "how can I turn this mileage run into Krug and caviar?" demographic.

Is AA basically trying to "fire" the demographic that wants to convert minimal airfare spend into maximal benefit (in the "fire your bad customers" sense)? Maybe. Or maybe FT is a rounding error (most redemptions are for domestic USA coach... the one thing all three airlines have actually left alone as an award level, so we can see that 25k seems to be a bit of a "magic number"). I think that what USA airlines have seen is a revenue-based system of rewarding customers hasn't hurt VX, B6 or WN, hasn't hurt foreign airlines who haven't given "a mile flown is a mile earned" in cheap Y for decades, and in an environment where they see miles from credit card = revenue, miles from flying = not as profitable... maybe they want to reward the stuff they think is most profitable. Of course, they could get some things wrong...

Unless EK bullies its way into flying within the US and then AA, DL, and UA panic and are forced to restore many amenities just to compete.

You have until June 30 to max out the Plat benefits. So not totally useless if you ask me. Also, you could try and get a status match with Alaska and then credit your AA flying to Alaska next year.

In trying to find some good in the changes I'd have to say the new short-haul awards might be useful, however not understanding the premium to fly out of Canada in the new award schedule. It's always been the same as US 48 and still is on most other carriers. Fortunately I'm within 2 hours of a border airport, so will be spending a lot more time in BUF.

Add me to the "would stick with AA at current status". That being said, I will certainly review my situation once I get to LTPL.



Definitely. They need to change the Gold and non-AA Advantage flyer earnings. Its a total insult to fly 25,000 more miles and get practically no RDM advantage. :td::td:

"5 miles/U.S. dollar – non-status AAdvantage member"

Hmmm. So a non-status AAdvantage member now gets bonus miles for every flight based on the price of the ticket? If that's true, they should scrap it and give those "extra" bonus miles to the Platinums. Yuuuuuuuuuuuuupp!!

Biggest negative for me happened this past year with EQS going from 100 to 120. Sounds like I may get more RDMs for my $500 short hauls though. Four (4) less SWUs clearly a negative.

I read back a few pages and did a quick search on "consolidator bulk fares" and only got hits in UA and Delta. As a MM UA refugee I recall there being a big stink, mainly with folks booking via their corporate travel sites, where no miles were awarded for "consolidator" or "bulk" fares. IIRC Delta does give credit for all paid fare types. As long as AA follows Delta and not UA, then I stay AA. Otherwise it's Delta for me down the road. Has anyone seen language from AA addressing this?

There are not many domestic USA routes on which an A380 or 77L operating 1x or even 2x daily makes sense. Consider that zero, nil, none, bupkis, nada, not a single US carrier has purchased an A380, or are going to, and how the Big Three have pretty much given up flying widebodies to places like Hawaii, save for markets that cannot be reached by narrowbodies, and you get the idea. EK's model and fleet is not meant to serve internal USA markets; it's meant to serve DXB as a scissors hub, and use it to connect places like India and Australia to the world. It is a good model for that.

The airlines the Big Three have to fear in the US market if cabotage was eliminated aren't EK and SQ, they are AK, DY, FR and U2. They would set up 737/A320 bases and start shredding market frequencies in key markets in a heartbeat, with lower-cost labor and lower costs, and able to pick off the price-sensitive people who make high frequency flying and hubs viable. This is basically the same model NK is using to good effect, and that F9 has transitioned to. It's worked for all of those airlines. We're starting to see this already in the TATL market from DY and WW... with EW to follow.

Service levels on the plane are entirely different creatures from loyalty programs outside the plane. Go look up what EK offers for RDM/EQM on their discounted Y fare if you think that somehow their hypothetical service in the North American market is going to usher back in the days of massive amounts of miles sloshing around if you buy lots of cheap Y (or look at SQ's program)... if anything, the outsized returns on Big Three loyalty programs were basically bribes for less competent service ("suffer through our lousy planes so every so often you can fly and enjoy some caviar and Krug"). Once those golden handcuffs are taken off... let's see if the Big Three can sink or swim.

(It's not like EK is some kind of paradise in the back... 10 across Y in 77Ws, and 615 seat A380's don't sound like much fun to me.)

I really hope one of the new features they are considering is the ability to upgrade for a fee after you purchase your ticket.

I fly weekly for business in coach only, if I could purchase the ticket and get a receipt for it then go and upgrade to business/1st on my own that would be great. Hope they are looking into this as a option

There is no way EK (or any othe ME carrier) wants to get into the weeds of the U.S. domestic aviation market. And if you want an example of how little demand there is for such a product, just look at VX's very limited presence in this country.

They just did change and that is what we are going to get.

Regards

Interesting. Absolutely 0 reason more or less for me to eek into platinum next year since the only reason to do so was for 2xing the miles. Now gold x7 and plat x8 really are close together. I guess I'll miss out on the exit rows. Shrug. Oh well.

NK and G4 are significantly larger than VX, and both have better operating margins than VX or B6.

Wow, 44 pages in less than 48-hours. After reading every comment with care and giving careful consideration to my comments....

Really this is not unexpected although the exact details and timing have been fuzzy. People belong to a specific FF program for a variety of reasons. My reasons are my personal travel needs flying DCA-BOS about 35-40X per year. Add in work travel for another 25 trips domestically and 2/3 international. So I hoard my miles through one program so that I can redeem miles for the trip I want when I want. I redeem about 250K per year and bank about 300K with travel, bonus, CC, etc.

Because of my needs for flexibility with the AA Shuttle, I will continue to loyAAl and adjust to the changes. YMMV.

Yup..I've been platinum almost every year for 10 years..not happy one bit.

Mrs.777 says I should fly enough every year to get LTPL and then decide what I want to do. Since I was leaning that way too, I think it might be the best route to take and then see how AS flying program is 4-6 years down the road.


What I'm saying is they need to change the 5 for non-AA status flyers and 7 for Gold flyers. Lower it down to say 1-2 for non-AA status flyers and 3-5 for Gold. Maybe then 8 for Platinum would be "worth it".

Contrary to most Biz class flyers out here, I have paid for every logged mile out of my own pocket and just completed my 2 millionth mile today (I had long suspected that the program would change for the worse very soon and wanted to get to my lifetime platinum status for whatever the "new value" maybe)....the sad part of the new deal is that SWU's are cut in half, not sure whether that is a REAL issue any more since most of the time with the long list of multimillion miler EXP's and their companies paying for biz class tickets, I rarely get my upgrades anyway...still, it is nice to know that I could have a bank of 8 each year to help me look for ways to fly longer and more expensive flights and enjoy the upgrades--AA execs surely must have considered that the lack of SWU's would decrease the desire and thus the demand from EXPs to fly routes where SWU may be used....but trying to understand the logic of those stupid bean counters gives my already jet-lagged brain a bigger headache!

Do you think they haven't already put consideration into the values they've chosen? Do you think they worked this all out last weekend over a couple hour pizza party at Doug's house?

These are the values, there announced. For now it's done. They aren't going to immediately back paddled because a punch of us on FT have spazzed out.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy at all, but I've been predicting for years in these forums that "winter was coming" but most didn't want to contemplate that reality.

Well, winter is here...

Regards

Am I reading this right: https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mi...s/british.aspx

Flying BA in D class and crediting to Alaska with MVP Gold status gives you 3.5 x flown miles as RDMs and 2.5 times flown miles as EQM? (*). Note: other airlines are 2.25 x RDM and 1.25 x EQM so this is BA specific.

If that is true after the switch to $ based RDM earning on AA then Alaska is a very interesting place to park say JNB-LHR-DXB on BA on a DONEx -- 45% of the way to MVP Gold in two segments and way more RDMs than you could earn on AA (though god knows exactly what RDMs you'd earn from AA for those 2 of 16 segments in an xONEx: good luck working out the $ value of it).

Still getting my head round the rules but the miles look perfectly usable at similar enough to AA value. Awards even still includes stopovers at the gateway city (remember that option). Different strengths but that is not bad thing if your miles are split between two programmes. And given Alaska didn't follow Delta, one can *hope* it won't switch to $s based RDMs in 2016.


The biggest thing that's having me ponder ditching AA is the RDMs massacre. I earn almost all RDMs from flying (mostly biz RTWs and cheap to mid level economy) and earning would be more than halved with the new rules. It would be ironic if I continued to fly AA because I can credit AA flights to Alaska for decent RDMs.

I can still use an SWU even if I was crediting an AA TATL to Alaska, right? I'm thinking of crediting enough flights to AA for EXP then crediting the rest to Alaska unless I want the EXP status flight perks (i.e. not flying upgraded or directly up front).


*:
"Elite Qualifying Flight Miles: Earned flight miles and premium cabin bonuses on British Airways count towards Elite Status." and;
"Club World (Business Class) Cabin: Earn actual flight miles* flown in R or I classes of service, plus 50% Bonus Miles. Earn actual flight miles* flown in J, C, or D classes of service, plus 150% Bonus Miles."

The anytime awards have become so inflated (at least premium cabin overseas), that its not even a joke anymore, its just sad.

I dropped the charade when i went SWA started flying more out of DAL. Different beast, but less guessing on booking award flights. Makes sense for the legacies to at some point switch to a points/$ redemption model as well.

The flights I constantly take as a plat will earn 1/2 the points on the 8x scheme. That isn't worth it no matter how much they screw everyone else. Shrug.

You would like others to be negatively impacted so that you can feel better about what you receive?

I would hold off a while and see whether AS sticks with its current model or whether it will decide to revamp its scheme in a manner similar to AA et al

After watching frequent flyer benefits erode for the last 20 years, this pretty much is the last straw for me. What's the point in chasing status anymore? AA fares are often 3X the fares on DL or UA out of Charlotte, depending on the destination. I am just going to take the lowest fare going forward, connection or not. Bye bye US/AA it was fun.

I was merely opining of what I believe "value" is to a Platinum such as myself. I don't need to be spoken to in a condescending manner either.

Parker et.al as well as countless other management have been known to make poor business decisions.

I'm not surprised they devalued but I'm simply not happy how Platinums have gotten screwed (at least when it comes to RDM's) over compared to non-AA elites and Gold.

Without being tautological, all are being impacted and I don't see the value (at least when it comes to RDM's) between non-Advantage elites and Gold compared to Platinums.

I don't believe I can make myself any clearer.

The suggestion of lowering base earnings seems to be nothing that benefits a platinum member other than a feeling superior to those getting less

It may have been interpreted as tautological, but the intent was that how does making it worse for gold/base members actually benefit a platinum member

My business travel is currently UK to USA west coast about 7-8 times a year, entirely in economy. What I value most from the FF program is anything that makes the long journey that little bit more bearable. Specifically lounge access (showers and alcohol!) and access to better seating (anything with more legroom is a big boon).

The RDM earned has always been a good bonus but its always struck me as extremely generous. I've been able to book 2 first class RTW journeys in the last couple of years, mostly on the back of O fares, it was never going to last.

These changes will actually make elite status earning a bit easier, since the occasional vacation on a J ticket will now earn a useful EQM bonus rather than the additional EQP not counting for much when most tickets were discount economy.

This year I will make EXP for the first time, partly due to a personal trip in Dec to take me over the threshold. I'm looking forward to the SWU's next year and obviously disappointed that there will be fewer in the future, but as the status will be easier to achieve it doesn't seem totally unreasonable.

Additionally earning EQM on BA will be at 0.5 rather than the 0.25 it was going to be for O fares, so that's a surprising bonus (obviously RDM stays at 0.25). Upgrading one half of a return to WTP will net an overall EQM earn rate of 100%, and normally those upgrades aren't too crazily expensive.

All in all, not great, but not the end of the world either.