ronniefastback

Never heard of a sticker system.....

Dave Noble

Probably because AA has no such thing

AA has 500 mile electronic upgrades , but a "sticker system" hasn't existed for years - apparantly it seems some think it is clever to use out of date terms

ashill

"Sticker" is a less clunky term than "500 mile upgrade" even if it is outdated.

Dave Noble

I have trouble seeing how the 14 characters "500mi upgrade" is more clunky than the 16 characters "sticker upgrade" though do see how it is more accurate and not requiring historical knowledge about AA

anabolism

I think that's a good rant. I'd have cut the mini-rant about domestic upgrades and upgrade email, as those are minor compared the SWU issue. You could send those in separately. You made your point that going from 8 to 4 SWUs is a dramatic reduction, and that people like you work hard and make scarifies to be able to fly AA (which is the point of a loyalty program). I think those two are your key take-home. Maybe send those two, tightly honed, to Customer Relations.

ACS has been getting a lot of complaints about the SWU Slasher, so maybe something will improve. The question is if AA is hearing more screams than they expected or the same? (I heard they focus-group tested slashing SWUs to 6 and 4, and the screaming was the same, so management figured, if the pain's the same, go with 4.)

ronniefastback

I somewhat agree. For people that only fly domestic, upgrades are a much bigger deal. I only do 4-6 transcons a year, so a decent amount but not many compared to some others. Upgrades just suck now and I knew this would happen. Take away competition and flights and throw more preferreds into the system and it was bound to happen. Even when I was Gold and Plat on US, I got upgraded most of the time. At Chairmans level it was automatic and you always got an email days ahead of time. The level of communication from AA sucks in comparison.... as well as the upgrades.

Regarding the "stickers"..... yeah, I'm fully aware of the 500 mile upgrades. I don't like them. I don't see the need for them. The # I have keeps growing because I can't use them. And some flights having 30+ on the upgrade list means there are plenty who want to use, but can't. On US, we didn't have that junk.... your preferred, if there's a seat you get it. On AA, you could have preferreds on the plane with no upgrades and potentially have 1st class seats sit empty on a flight if there we no 500 mile upgrades available. It will never happen because there are too many out there, but it's possible. That just seems stupid to me.... but I assume there's a reason for it....

SFO777

Stickers started years ago when it was SOP for both UA and AA years ago. UA dropped the sticker thing but AA kept it as they had a much better product that pax were willing to pay for. That "better product" is no longer but why give up the revenue (at one time close to $100 million a year)? Today, the stickers are just another revenue source.

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

Even with AA charging $30/$35 per over 500 miles for Golds and PLTs I can assure you that an empty F seat is rare. So why would AA give up this revenue source if its consistently filling the F cabin (albeit some of those are EXPs, award tixs, copays, paid F). I would agree the most difficult downgrade is the drop of 8 SWUs to 4 SWUs but nothing compared to if AA had gone to a spend requirement for elite status.

GUWonder

What proportion of EXPs don't spend enough money on travel to meet or exceed the amount of money that DL/UA has for Diamond/1K spending qualification?

While I wouldn't be surprised by AA adopting spending requirement for elite status and announcing such next year or the year after next, I would be surprised if such requirement really guts the current EXP count by more than 1/5 (if even close to that).

I do agree that the elite upgrade sales revenue seems to be still be substantial enough for AA to stick with it. But if first class monetization via selling upgrades to non-elites and selling discounted premium cabin space takes off enough, then the equation for AA will change and we'll see AA copy DL yet again.

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

I would tend to agree that most EXPs would still qualify on dollar spend-most of that OPP. However, I would tend to believe that there is a larger share of MR/leisure EXPs here on FT. This thread would zoom out of control if AA were to adopt status by dollar spend or by some EQP qualification. With the domestic F class getting smaller (More 8F seat 319s and 16 seat 321s while 16F MD80s and 24F seat 757s being retired) you can bet upgrades will become harder to come by, separate from AA becoming more aggressive in domestic F pricing.

xliioper

Not trying to be clever. Not an AA flyer and I don't really know exactly how it works. Just have seen other people use the term. At any rate, if the poster was unaware of the 500 mile electronic upgrades, I suspect that is part of his issue with upgrades in the move from US to AA.

ronniefastback

The obvious question is why post in here if you don't fly AA and don't know how it works? It's hard not to know about the 500 mile upgrades because you are asked if you want to upgrade when you book a ticket..... the problem is with US there were no 500 mil upgrades. If you had status, you were eligible, period.

GUWonder

I agree, but it wouldn't be much different that what was seen with DL and UA. Interestingly enough, some of the bigger FT critics of the dollar spend requirements at DL and UA went sort of quiet after the initial (and sometimes frequent) expressions of disquiet and instead sort of double-downed on mileage and status running -- sometimes doing so by way of premium cabin mileage runs.

The dollar spend requirements at DL and UA aren't a hassle for my accounts, but I never welcome additional elite status qualification requirements that are designed to complicate qualification requirements and increase the cost of qualification/retention of elite status.

ashill

I would say that's completely inarguable.

AA has essentially adopted EQP qualification. On partners, they've modified EQPs slightly for the worse (moving some discount Y from 1.0 to 0.5 and full Y from 1.5 to 1.0, though also moving some partner fares that earn 0.125-0.25 EQPs per BIS mile to 0.5), and on AA, they've modified it significantly for the better (even relative to the promo this year, since deep discount Y moves from 0.5 to 1.0), but to my eye, new EQMs are more similar to old (particularly 2015, with the bonuses) EQPs than to old EQMs.

SS255

US also had an electronic upgrade system years ago. CP's and a companion got upgraded for free. Silvers and Golds (this was before the US-HP merger, so there was no Platinum level) earned something like four 500-mile e-upgrades for each 10K miles flown on US metal. I can't remember when it switched to free upgrades for all elites -- sometime around 2003, I think -- but I do recall the uproar by CP's when US converted all of the lower level elites' 500-milers into RDM's.

AND, US used to give ALL elites two SWU's per year.