metallo

We know, from Doug Parker's own comments, in fact, that AA doesn't really want to reward the high segment low spend flyer. He essentially called it a mistake that AA ever did so with this segment of its flyers. See below (from 2017)...

Source: https://www.dallasnews.com/business/...-into-bitcoin/

"American recently revamped AAdvantage to give those who pay more for tickets a leg up in the coveted realm of upgrades — a move that Parker defended.

“All of our customers are valuable, but those who pay us the most are the most valuable,” he said. “That’s the behavior you want to reward. You had this really perverse thing going on where we had people wanting miles so badly that they would do these mileage runs — looking for the cheapest fare they could find to go to who-knows-where and back.

“And that didn’t seem right to us. The dollar-based plan makes much more sense. We’re in the right place now.”

Parker groused that American should have called them dollars instead of miles 36 years ago. It would make it clearer now that airlines rake in so much dough from credit card partnerships."

coxm

This is the bane of the SFO based AA flyer’s existence (see relevant post here AA really has given up on SFO-based flyers)

while there have been years I’ve spent between $50k and $75k and been rewarded with CK…there are just as many years I’ve spent >$100k and was given a CK challenge to spend $Xk (usually 10-20 in 2 months) more to keep CK.there were years that I even routed. SFO-LAX-LHR (on AA)-Europe instead of SFO-LHR-Europe on BA to increase my AA metal, and lost CK.

This year, I hit the 200k LPs in June, but hit 30 segments last week

Alex_I

Perhaps, AA should just publish requirements for CK program to stimulate high spend flyers. But would this matter? With all the brilliance of Doug Parker and the ingenuity of LPs (which none of the competitors adopted so far), the AAL stock continues an approximately linear decline from the second half of 2019 (with a Covid dip and recovery) and is $14.03 today (-$31.97 or -69.50% in past 5 years.

Antarius

​​​​​​CK has always been about profitability and not about spend. There's some general spend threshold, as AA isn't going to give CK to someone with 2 full fare F intl flights, but overall it's all about how profitable you are.
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Antarius

Given that CK is about profitability and consumers don't know the cost basis, it wouldn't help to put a number out there.
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355F1

Plus the OP stated that most of his J fares were on partners.

Alex_I

- I think the initial motivation of AA was to reward some very special customers with (non-publicized) CK status. (Similarly, the first Admirals Club served the same purpose and was by invitation only). Those could be the big spenders / most profitable, or the the most influential customers. The point was not to squeeze more $$ from those folks but to reward and develop long-tern loyalty.
Nowadays, AA invited CK based not only flying but also total LPs received (as reported by some bloggers). Once you start to acknowledge CK, you may as well to put a target number to stimulate the big spenders. AA did this in the past by sending individual offers of spending $ XX in Y months to renew CK. The "new" AA has a tendency to monetize everything from the Flagship check-in to lounge access. We know where all this is coming. Correct me if I am wrong, but in the past one could simply buy the top tier status with US Airways Dividend miles program. Someone can come with an idea to sell CK and, perhaps, will get promoted within the company.
However, all this would not make a dent in the overall downhill direction AA going in the recent years.

gdm

Thanks to everyone for the good discussion here.

This conversation and some introspection made me remember that you learn what relationships are made of by actions. Sometimes those actions are hard to listen to when they come after 30+ years. I appreciate the hard-nosed commentary.

I did want to clarify two points though.

First, my annual AAdvantage card spend is well north of $250K. So it’s not that.

Second, the collapse of AA’s ability to actually get me anywhere reliably out of SFO has basically forced me to partners.

Case in point: a while back I booked SFO-DFW-LHR on a Sat departure (and the corresponding return the next Fri). SFO-DFW went four hours late because … who knows … and as a result I would have mis-connected in DFW. After five-ish hours on hold for a EXP agent, the next flight they could find for me was departing that Tuesday. Tariff desk was unwilling to accommodate on any alternate routing (eg I get to PDX, SEA, or LAX on my own). You bet that flight got cancelled and rebought on a BA nonstop.

That’s the third or fourth catastrophically ....ed up DFW connection this year.

I don’t know what my long term plan is. In the short term, I have just shy of 3M redeemable miles, and that’s too many. So I’ll turn some of those in for a while, at least for personal travel, and see where I end up after that.

Thanks again!

galaticos

Agree - I do this.. Lot of US-India trips and after AA EXP done, shifted to UA and got 1k done.. the SWUs are worthless with primary flying being work related INTL J.. On an average I do one trip a month and it still wouldnt get me to 30..