Credit card miles
 

So after December 1, 2011, no credit card miles will count toward the million miler status??? I guess me and many other loyal AA patrons will never achieve that now.:(

I am at 1.2 and this certainly puts lifetime plat at least 3 years away for me:(

Indeed... extending the benefit to that card will mean the difference between me canceling or not in the next couple of months.

It has begun!!!!
 

I am converting as many points to miles to get as close to 1,000,000 miles as possible before 12/1.

I have 875,966 miles today
Just redeemed 20,000 Starwood Points for 25,000 American Airlines miles.
Just redeemed 70,000 Priority Club Points for 14,000 American Airlines miles.
Within the past month received a Citi AAdvantage card with 30,000 miles after $1000 spent and another 5000 miles for each $5000 spent. I have spent $900 as of today so will be receiving 30,000 miles soon plus a bonus of 5,000 miles plus $5000 (for an approximate spend up until 12/1) or so spent so basically a total of 40,000 miles.
Over the next few months, I should earn around 14,000 miles through BankDirect and 2000 miles through AAdvantage Dining.
A couple of weeks ago I initiated a $106,000 refinance through Wells Fargo’s program which will yield 10,000 additional miles but I do not know if that will go through by 11/30. So not counting this program, I will have around 971,000 miles.

Would you exchange my approximate 10,000 Starwood Points for approximately 10,000 miles and/or approximately 64,000 Continental points for about 14,000 AAdvantage miles through Points.com?

It would not be a surprise to me if within 5 years, all US legacy carriers had loyalty programs more on the model of JetBlue or Southwest, with more immediate and direct linkage of "reward currency" to revenue. Not sure if that can properly be considered a loyalty program on the same way the current legacy mileage programs are.

AA's MM change is no surprise.

What EQP promo?

Reread the OP. There is still one specific credit card that will count towards million miler status through Decmeber 2012.

Wrong. Almost all of my 2.6MM has been flying. But much of it was elite status bonuses since I've been EXP forever and a day....


Then I assume you've tapped out your credit line limits. Only one way to deal with that...get rid of other cards to free up space in your credit line limits. That said, because of recent legislation, the outcome is not certain. You might get rid of a few cards and still not get approved if you reapply right away...

Glad that I reached 2 million miles a long time ago. Lifetime Plat will take a lot of flying to achieve for someone just starting out now.

Dear Maya,

Can we now have all of the Verizon miles post by Nov 30, please? :)

Seriously, thank you for the heads up.

I do view this as devaluation, not of the core AAdvantage program perhaps, but certainly of its components like Citi AAdvantage card, Starwood Amex card, AAdvantage eShopping Mall, etc. Those will become less appealing to many. Ironically, there is now at least one less incentive to purchase premium cabin fares.

You should clarify the status of EQMs and RDMs earned on partner airlines, OneWorld or otherwise.

Personally, I remain clueless about the charms of lifetime status, especially Gold. If one flies AA somewhat regularly, one should make Gold or Platinum year to year anyway, and somewhere along the way LT status may happen, or not, it just doesn't seem that big a deal to me. However, I realize that this is a minority opinion.

In a way, I admire your "partners" who seem to have talked you into diluting one of your major competitive edge, some might say the only one, while they keep theirs. If I were representing AA, I would at least have gotten CX et al to agree to downgrade their FA standards and cabin service, just to get something in return and level the playing field. :)

Anyway, this suspense out of the way, let us focus on strengthening the program in other ways, so we can get out of this competitive imbalance.

Regards and Best Wishes.

Maya makes no specific reference to Verizon Wireless accessories purchased through the AA e shopping portal. I assume those will still count for 83K miles towards MM status. :)

The changes are understandable. [Except for a near doubling of the time required for me to get 4 additional SWUs for the next MM, it doesn't negatively impact me in any regard.] With massive credit card "sign-up" bonuses and associated credit card churning, BankDirect play, and purchase/payment games, it was getting to be a joke for adult US persons with a good credit score and access to some funds to rack up Million Mile status levels without even being a frequent flyer on AA and/or AA partners.

Also, given upcoming devaluation of AA miles used for flights, perhaps credit card "sign-up" bonuses are going to remain quite large (or even get larger) to entice customers -- absent this change, those large(r) sign-up bonuses would inflate the ranks of MM customers a lot.

If you're Gold this year and will qualify for Gold the normal way next year, you'll probably cover the remaining 29,000 miles in the next year. I don't think there's any benefit to having lifetime Gold when you've already reached Gold anyway (and given that the million miler program is now a published benefit, there's less reason to worry about it vanishing without notice than the unpublished benefit it replaces). If it were me, I'd do the reasonable things that you're doing to get to 971,000 and then be patient for the rest.

10,000 Starwood points for 10,000 AA miles before Dec 1 seems fairly reasonable; 64,000 CO points for 14,000 AA miles does not.

I will cancel my AA credit cards when they no longer count. I'm close to 2 mill but may not make it.

Well, your profile says GLD. Will you earn GLD the normal way this year? If so, that gives you GLD thru 2/13, and if you keep flying the 25K/yr pace, you'd hit 1MM right around then. If so, I'd save the SPG points.