I flew LGA-RDU last week and saw that even though I'm AA Plat I only get actual flown miles towards 1MM and not the 500 mile minimum. That's an annoying change.

No promos!
As many stated, this could be a potential source of revenue, but AA does not see it that way. They just made the changes and forget about it.

I was close to the 2MM mark, so I jumped on the offer to buy miles when there was a 30% discount plus a 20% bonus. Never in my life I would have paid to get miles, specially when there are many ways to get them for free or very cheap.

But I would guess if that today, some people are short of 1MM or 2MM by less than, say 100K, some would spend the money to get miles to secure lifetime Gold or Platinum.
Just my $.02

I thought purchased miles didn't count toward MM status any more?

They don't. The OP decided to buy miles on promo BEFORE the conversion to MM2.0.

It's not really a secret. It was even discussed in a major motion picture.
At 10 million miles you get to sit with the chief pilot, who looks a lot like Sam Elliott. I guess if Segal can be an actor and a deputy sheriff, then an actor can also be a chief pilot, and not just a wannabe like that Dirty Dancing guy.

Oh snap!

They don't count. That doesn't mean that in the future AA won't run a limited time special where they would count. They seem to run discounted price specials fairly often. MM would be another tool in the marketing belt.

A more likely possibility would be to change the rules on the Citibank AAdvantage Executive Mastercard, which is due to stop earning MM miles at the end of this year (for folks who got the card before a certain date). We might expect them to at least count the 10k EQM for $40k spend bonus as MM miles as a future card enhancement. They will have to do something or the card will lose most of its customers in 2013.

However, don't expect them to do much of anything about the MM program until bankruptcy is finished.

Other options to accumulate Million Miler miles?
 

Newbie here and I'm sure this has been asked before but... I'm 50K miles away from reaching Million Miler. I don't fly much for biz any more. I know there was a credit card promotion in 2011 but is there any way now to accumulate miles that count toward the goal other the the old fashioned way of flying? If not, what is your opinion as to if they will offer something in the future?

That promotion is over, and there have really been no hints at all about other ways to get lifetime miles since.

I'm pretty sure you'll have to close the gap with BIS miles.

Crap, I didn't know that is how it works. Is this the change the was implemented last year? If so, I should have paid better attention.

Million Miler Points on Partners?
 

Does anyone know if I can earn them on BA/IB and LY?

Definitely yes on BA/IB.

I can confirm JL and (when on a mile-earning fare code) CX.

My recollection was that it was EQM-earning (OW flights, and codeshares) but a quick look at the head of the thread seems to indicate that the base miles from any AAdvantage-mile-earning flight would count, even on non-OW partners.

Good caveat to point out. I recently took a OW partner flight that earned less than 100% EQM, and that amount was what my million miler counter was incremented by, not the actual miles flown!