Passmethesickbag

I take your point that, if business travel as we knew it will never resumes, then at least AA will retain a cadre of diehard frequent fliers who were willing and able to do random mileage runs to random destinations to keep their status whilst the delta variant was raging. How much use they will be to American if business travel in any meaningful sense does resume is another matter which remains to be seen.

FlyingEgghead

I assumed that duchy's "Have we ?" referred to safari ari's remark that "UK ... has more or less ended their lockdowns", i.e., duchy was challenging whether they have actually ended.

safari ari

Considering I was in LHR the day Johnson removed restrictions, and from the scenes of full stadiums across the country for today's round of EPL matches, I would say they have.

https://apnews.com/article/europe-bu...ea000a2c65618b

wendyg

I have to sympathize with the OP. The fact that we *can* technically fly places (with the complication of having to arrange at least three covid tests and, in the case of some countries, isolate on return) doesn't make it sensible or safe to do so. The most obvious reason for being an AA elite instead of a frequent flyer on BA or one of the others is that you fly to the US a lot. Right now, non-US citizens can't enter the US - and even those of us who can are aware that the US is currently seeing 100,000-150,000 confirmed covid cases a day. There are a lot of places in the US it's smarter not to go right now. There are also restrictions on entering some other countries from the Uk because of the Delta variant. None of this is in the OP's control.

That said, the year isn't over, and I, too, am hoping they give us a break.

wg

duchy

bit like saying Vegas is safe because the tourists are back , despite the increasing infection levels and the need to bring back the mask mandate. Football and tourism aren’t anything to do with business travel. So I’m afraid I can’t agree with you. If your business is in Athens then you might be correct, if your business is in (say) the US then if U.K. based, travel to Athens is pointless (and a little nuts whilst infections are still high for pointless travel, a pandemic isn’t the time for mileage runs)

flyerCO

It doesn't matter the reason for travel. Travel is now open. If you dont feel risk is worth it, fine. However you can't expect an airline to bend over for you when planes are flying. You can catch a flight, so why should airline act like you can't, especially when millions are doing exactly what you refuse?

writerguyfl

Given the shaky financial situation that airlines are in, I doubt American is overly concerned about the prospect of losing UK-based elites to free agency (or another program). I'm speculating, but I can't imagine there are a ton of them. It's usually better to spend your finite resources (labor, marketing money) concentrating on larger groups.

Essentially, the old playbooks on how airlines handle severe economic distress no longer apply because international travel isn't possible in many markets.

Passmethesickbag

If their expectation is that we will remain legally prevented from flying with American indefinitely, then yes.

Donsyb

Because most of their competitors are - therefore their previously loyal frequent flyers will leave and move to those other airlines.

GlobalMatt

I actually LOL'd at this. Brilliantly said!

ChurnieEls

OP I think you're making an assumption that business travel will resume to the levels pre-COVID to which even the airlines have acknowledged it will not - its expected to be 80% of what it was by the end of 2022.

The cat is out of the bag that virtual work and virtual meetings work, and whilst certain meetings and work is better performed, and indeed in some cases must, happen in person, there's tacit acknowledgement above that a good 20% of travel was superfluous.

With that data in hand, I imagine AA are content that current strategy serves them best for 2022, its unfortunate for you that you seem to have fallen between the cracks on that one.

Passmethesickbag

My assumption is not quantitative but qualitative. I have a pressing professional need to do make a long overdue trip to the US. Essentially, a single Premium Economy roundtrip LHR-ORD would be sufficient for me to meet AA's requalification requirements. The problem is that a presidential proclamation has been prohibiting me from entering since January 25. The notion that AA might want to keep its relationship with its frequent fliers who are affected by this proclamation frozen until such time as it is lifted seems reasonable to me. That's all.

1/4MM@20

OP - one factor you may be missing is the number of UK based elites who are still able to fly AA due to their citizenship. I remember attending an AA event around 10 years ago for UK based EXPs and the vast majority of attendees were Americans (based on accents etc). If many of the UK based EXPs have requalified based on the reduced thresholds there will be little incentive for AA to go after the, perhaps, smaller subset of non- US citizens.

Passmethesickbag

That is a fair point.

taxicabnumber

​​​​​​
​​​​​​This is exactly my situation. I'm an American citizen living in London; the main reason I'm AA EXP rather than BA Gold is that I was EXP when I moved over here, and it made more sense to just stick with that rather than starting from scratch. I suspect the same applies to a lot of us (though not OP) who live here but maintain AA status...