Mementos from AAdvantage Million Miler program - In pictures
 

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Wine stopper from AA

My dad recently retired and while packing up his office we found these two items from AA. Thought this would be a good place to share.

10 millions miles... amazing... would be nice if AA gave a year pass in F for the year... (I know it would never happen)

Isn't it the other way round? All miles earned counted towards lifetime status until a couple of years ago, so decent chance only a smaller portion is BIS...

Neat trophy and recognition.

Yeah, that is my thought too. Getting 10 Million lifetime miles was hellavu a lot easier not too long ago....

Today someone flying 500 EQMs a year would take 20 years to hit that mark. That would mean 20 years of flying likely every week of those 20 years, often long haul. I can't imagine what the body would be like after 20 years.

Yeah, I know someone who has one of the 10M mile planes, and many to most of those miles came through biz spend, not BIS.

More than a couple. This changed Jan 1, 2012, so it was almost 7 years ago.

at 500 EQMs a year, it would take 20 thousand years to hit 10 million miles. :p

The spelling error in the subject line is making my eyes bleed.

I was expecting Mentos...the Freshmaker

Not quite EQMs, but rather actual miles (no premium class multipliers that apply to EQMs count).. But I get your intended point. It would be a doozy to achieve for sure.

I think I have a new goal. That plane is crazy cool.

U
 

The facts:

Until 1 Dec 2011, all miles were counted. Of course, no bonus miles existed for some of that time, but by that time every mile earned - credit card, promo, bonus, you name it - counted for Million Miler Status.

AA offered several “trophy” gifts (such as the pewter “round the world” wine bottle stopper) to those crossing certain miles thresholds - until bonus miles brought massive “inflation” to the AAdvantage Million Miler recognition program. The OP’s dad earned uninflated AA miles, making these quite cool. (I’ve flownAA since the 1940s, but not with the frequency he must have, as I also flew on Aerovías Latino-Americanas, Aerovías Guest, Mexicana, Eastern, Western, Pan Am, Brannif etc. etc. and even lost my original AA account. So many of my account’s nearly 6 million miles include lots of bonus and promo miles.)

I understand the spirit of the statement "uninflated", but the letter of the statement is possibly not correct.
A frequent flyer on AA would earn 2x miles per mile flown due to FF program bonuses. In addition, there were frequent promotions as well as other means of gaining miles (500 mile upgrades expiring etc). Credit card spend also counted, and AAdvantage Citi credit cards have been around since at least 1998 (when I got one).
There were also promos that could be used in the past such as the infamous US Mint, the cereal boxes, etc. Not saying these were what occurred for the OP's father, but simply noting that there were lots of ways to gain program miles without BIS.
I'd lastly note that the present spend based mileage earnings, for those people like myself who never fly biz/first, make it a lot harder to earn AA miles even if they counted towards MM status.
Irregardless of the above, the fact that 10MM was reached is impressive no matter how you slice it.