It's been a challenging two years.....
AA has been good about extending status, and I've flown a little since the pandemic. I appreciated the extensions and the Fall opportunity to spend $3000 on flights to maintain status. I thought that I did that, but now know that my travels have netted $2991 in EQD, instead of $3000. So, come, March, I will change from EXP to no status. Given the new FF program, it looks like the end of the road for me with AAdvantage, after 34 years. It's been great, but moving on....

P.S. I will add that my father was a pilot for AA, and that I have valued that connection to American Airlines. AA has treated my family well over the years. But, at this point, AAdvantage is just being driven by credit cards, and is no longer a frequent flyer program.

Your not missing much if you aren�t flying much. If you really want EXP do some shopping, that�s really the loyalty AA wants now :-)

I will increase my flying this coming year, depending on COVID, and return to my regular pattern. Just not on AA.

Free agent is the way :-) I have been flying delta and United more after years of mainly AA and I�ve been very impressed.

The promo to keep EXP was $2,000 EQD from July 15 to Dec. 15, wasn't it?

Did you ask another airline to match your EXP?

There is something I don't understand. What benefit does EXP has that PPro do not?

https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage-p...ite-status.jsp

I see the same batch of benefits as PPro, just a bit nicer. There used to be a benefit. When you make a significant change to your award ticket, there is a charge. That charge is waived for EXP. Back then I did paid $150 for the change. That was the time before they created PPro. Now the website make no mention of it.

Oh there are quite a few: upgrades on award tickets and the upgrade window being nearly 30 hours earlier.

That's how I felt initially, but it turns out that it might be a lot easier to make EXP under the new rules. So far I've spent about $700 and expect to receive about 43K LPs in exchange (if all goes as planned) as well as 43K RDM. And we're not even 3 weeks into the year.

Any particularly lucrative spend vs. LP opportunities?

Nothing that hasn't been discussed here already. I don't subscribe to any blogs so I get all my deals from here. The three threads are the master thread, the SimplyMiles thread, and the hotel bookings thread.

I have 6K from CC spend, 13K from a hotel booking (which haven't posted yet so I'm a bit nervous), and the rest from eShopping (Motley Fool, Verizon, Sunbasket, Bright Cellars) and SimplyMiles (Byte and Mercato).

I'm probably going to stop for the time being because I don't trust AA to not make fools of us and change their definition of "base" miles.

I�m waiting until March to do any shopping promos. AA isn�t shy to change things especially given the less than clear terms so far.

Also a free agent. My last flight on AA was last Saturday, 1/15/22 CDG-MIA-DFW.

I'm retired, who buys J or F for MrsDallas49er and me. Going forward, competitive price, convenience, passenger positive experience, and a positive sense of adventure (none of which AA currently offers), will determine who will get our $. Looking at 2022 and beyond, I don't expect see much, if any AA going forward.