We've forgotten the REAL loser in the $1 coin scheme.

Who paid for all those UPS trucks delivering boxes of coins to Chez Pickles?

:td:WE US TAXPAYERS DID.:td:

Remember, it was "free shipping". The idea was to get dollar coins into general circulation. The US Mint had a program where they would pay the shipping cost of getting a couple of rolls of dollar coins into the hands of many people. The coins would go into circulation, people would find they liked them, and the US Mint would eventually save money circulating dollar coins instead of relatively short-lived dollar bills.

Instead, 800,000 dollar coins were shipped, free, to one person, Our Hero, who then took them to his bank. What does the bank do? Store them, or send them back to the US Mint. Did those coins go into general circulation thanks to the free shipping? No.

(Again, I truly think Mr Pickles is a prince among men. I have nothing against him personally. I only wish I would have thought of it before he did.)

I love a man with 2M FFMs to throw around. I'm all ears.

Not every retired business flyer is an "executive" and not everyone can readily afford the $450/yr fee for the Citi Executive World Elite Grand-Poobah MasterCard, especially just for the sake of AC access and "pseudo-elite" benefits on infrequent flying. But that is beside the point. I was responding to your comment about why people who already qualify for elite status through their yearly flying would be concerned about LT status.


Rewarding customers only makes business sense if doing so increases profits or otherwise supports the business. Awarding LT status increases revenues - primarily in the short term; people spending more with AA in the runup to achieving LT status. Once achieved, it also costs them revenue from loss of baggage fees, club access, SWUs, etc. (I suspect the loss of baggage fees is the major cost to AA as SWUs are "capacity controlled" and the only additional cost is due to the difference in food/beverage service. And even that's somewhat offset by fees and the requirement to purchase a more expensive "published" fare to begin with).

Maybe AA thinks that making the MM program public under these terms will result in more people actually flying their (and their partner's) metal. Maybe they just want to reduce costs. Who knows. But if it's just about costs, then I would look for AA to announce an increase in the cost of their awards; especially premier cabin awards.

Does he bring a backpack? ;)

To correct the many errors in your post would only drive this thread further off-topic.

Don't confuse fame with illusion.

If you register your cards, all you need is to make one single phone call.

I think AMEX has such service, and BofA has advertised such service before.

No source or collaboration for that claim will credibly validate that lifetime Platinum was a systemic benefit for reaching 1,000,000 AA miles 10 years ago or thereabouts.

That claim was debunked by a post I made, a post in which an FT link from a bit more than 10 years ago was provided to show that even then 1,000,000 AA miles gave lifetime Gold status.

The goal post has now been moved to the 1990s, but I'm not looking into validation of that as I don't recall anything about 1,000,000 AA miles giving lifetime Platinum status in the 1990s. Then again I wasn't really as deeply involved in this game back then, so who knows.

exit row seating on domestic business flights makes it worthwhile. refer to my forum name...

what the...??

It would have been nice to see some form of "future" MM incentive beyond the 4 SWUs for customers over the 2MM mark.

There's really no good news for any of us here.

The program is going from being overly generous to being pretty stingy. I can understand those who have not locked it in being unhappy. Even my march to 3MM is going to take a lot longer than I thought it would, but if I can keep EXP every year on reasonable fares, I will get good benefits regardless of the MM program.

Having status and thinking that the current scheme is flawed is not selfish. I don't yet have lifetime with AA but don't think that it makes any sense for credit cards, hotel points, purchased miles etc to count towards status

I would say that there would be rationale to allow 1st/business/full economy could earn more, but if using the "eqp" concept, then one might say that the deep discount should only earn 0.5

The requirements seem high compared against, say , Qantas, where the requirements for LT Silver (ruby) is 20 times that of an annual earning for Silver and 20 times Gold requirement to get LT Gold rather than the 40 for the AA equivalent

comparing also against UA, it is less generous

The consideration though I spose is that there may be a lot of people who will already be well on their way to LT status so number of years may be greatly affected by that

Because being platinum elite without ever setting foot on an Oneworld aircraft is asinine? :rolleyes:

Yeah, this is my main sticking point. I am out of ORF, and UA gets me where I need to go much better than AA (Including MUC funnily enough), but UA has such abysmal customer service, that it really leaves me in a quandary.

Yeah, I do. It's not my first concern, but it would be nice down the road.