fotographer

sorry if this had been covered before... job requirements in India, might force a move for a couple of years.
just wondering how AA sees this in terms of keeping status.(EXP currently)
Already have an apartment sorted out.. and have bank accounts in India too.

Thanks for your help ..

JDiver

Aa sees this as “earn $15,000 EQD and 120 EQS or 100,000 EQM”, regardless of where you live. Your ability to retain AA status will depend on your travels, not your residence. If you will travel a lot using oneworld partners like BA, CX, QR, MH, UL etc. in qualifying fare classes, you’ll be good. If not...

fotographer

Thank you so much for the quick response....
(mods you can remove this post)

JDiver

We actually don’t remove posts merely because they’re answered.

Enjoy India!

Moderator

moondog

I would switch to BA if you can meet the "4 meet BA flights" requirement, and fly in J/F often.

erik123

It would depend on where you fly most often? Look into a status match if useful.

SiempreBCNJFK

I'd consider matching with Delta or United. Both have EQD waivers for those living outside the US. It might be easier to maintain status that way. Also if you plan on doing Air India a bit, that might help *A status qualification.

That being said, if you're flying from India to the US a lot, you'll likely be flying CX or QR a bit too. If you're flying in premium cabins, you should requal no problem with AA.

econometrics

I lived in Israel for a year a few years back. It was actually easy for me to retain my AA status while abroad, as I flew BA everywhere from TLV.

Living in India, it would only take a handful of trips back to the States to requalify. Especially if you find some cheap Premium Economy tickets on BA, then credit them to your AA account. You can really rack up the EQD doing that against a lower spend.

fotographer

Thank you all for responding so quickly...

LDNConsultant

I completely agree, I was traveling between US - India at least once a month for work for a good 1.5 years and it was extremely easy to rack up the appropriate EQD/EQM for AA since the options were CX/QR. CX/QR will fly to major destination to India (e.g. Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and etc) and another point of note since you are so close to Colombo - you will be able to get cheap flights from CMB to US in J/F to help gain status in AA. The one issue might be the intra India flights in which OneWorld do not have any partners. If you are worried about lounge access, major Indian airpots have PP lounges and would get the appropriate CC to hep gain entrance.

Best of luck on the move!

panjabi

Hi Fotographer,

Another hack to keep in mind is the AmericanAirlines.in

It is a weird semi-independent website that feeds off Amadeus (and not Sabre). It sometimes lists lower price fares (maybe hidden ex-India fares) than the main AA.com website. It also will list certain "hidden" routings like DEL-NRT-DFW-HKG-DEL (happens once every few months)

The main reason that it is weird is that it happily shows a routing as "Business", when you select Business, but if you are not careful, you will end up with one entire leg (typically the BA segment ) in Y. So open each routing and cross check each leg carefully before you book an unbelievable fare

Safe travels my friend! I visit our India office 4 times a year, and it only takes me 3 to make EXP. So, to the point the others made, if you travel to the US, it will be very easy for you to keep your status

Warm Regards,

Panjabi

fotographer

Thanks so much for the information.
Qualifying has not been a problem for the last 10 to 12 years.. usually at $28K and at least 180K miles..
I was asking because I believe DL does not have a $$$ spend if you live outside of the USA
Thanks once again

moondog

BA, DL, and UA do not have spend requirements for non-US addresses, which gives the OP options in all 3 alliances, and AS might be worth considering because its miles are still fairly valuable.

IMO, the OP should make a decision based on his own expected flying patterns.

For me, *A made sense when I was based in Beijing because CA was strong there, but after I moved to Shanghai, I realized that Skyteam was the only viable option (if I cared about loyalty). As such, I am now a DL person. While the miles are about as worthless as they get, at least they don't expire, and I can still redeem awards like SHA-HKG at good rates.

I was also BA Gold for several years, which is actually pretty easy to maintain, if you do a decent amount of J/F travel. However, I dropped out after they implemented the BA flights requirement.

In terms of the value of miles, it appears that the US3 are all moving in the DL direction (i.e. no published award chart, 800k mile awards, but some bargains and okay partner awards). Meanwhile, BA devalued just yesterday, but it wasn't incredibly bad. With respect to AS, I'm honestly shocked that they've retained their awesome award prices for this long.