Yes - an Emerald would need to be traveling international. Can be traveling in Coach and still get in QF F lounge as well as Flagship.
Only AA Emerald (PPro or higher) can use miles to get in the Flagship Dining. Others cannot buy access to FFD.

Appears any AA member (including non-Elite) can buy with $ access to Admirals or Flagship. I assume Flagship access is more $. Not clear if one would need to be non-Elite international to be able to buy Flagship access (as opposed to Admirals).

I think the Flagship Dining assumes that you have access to the Flagship Lounge and you are paying with miles to get in the Dining area as opposed to the buffet.
"Coming soon: Dine in luxury at the airport when you redeem miles for Flagship® First Dining passes, available once you reach AAdvantage Platinum Pro® status."

At LAX - the QF lounges are very convenient to AA gates, via the connector to TBIT. Just a level up once you enter TBIT - take the elevator up.
In fact - AA uses some of the gates in TBIT - for flights to AKL for example - so the QF lounges are more convenient then the LAX Flagship in Term 4.

Also the American Express Centurion Lounge - is in the basement under the QF F and J lounges - 3 levels down. You access the hallway which takes you to the down elevator for Centurion - by taking the down escaltor just after you enter TBIT from Term 4 connector.

Wow. That one little detail turns "6 more months for AAdvantage Members" around doesn't it. Nothing like sneaking in a stealth devaluation while making it sound like a new member benefit.

Nice catch on that...very shady!

Re-reading it I see what you're saying. I could be wrong, but given how sloppy AA always is with this kind of thing I'm not really worried at all that this is some kind of stealth reduction of the 5 day award hold. They're just talking about paid flights.

"24-hour trip hold:"
does a 24 hour hold have anything to do with award holds? no. there is no ambiguity here. there are two kinds of holds in the system. they are not talking about the one you are concerned with.

I'm wondering if some of this is to ensure AA flyers continue to credit miles to AAdvantage instead of Alaska, being that Alaska eliminated their requirement that a minimum number of segments be flown on their metal for MVP status. Given they still have distance-based elite qualification with tiers at 20k / 40k / 75k / 100k, AA flyers who usually fly discounted economy will likely have an easier time attaining Alaska status and enjoying all the Oneworld benefits on AA.

I find it odd that the verbiage here is "earn miles" rather than "earn miles and loyalty points". Though I certainly hope I am wrong and just reading way too into it.

"This new offering — 1,000 bonus Loyalty Points — is American's answer. "Call it a Loyalty Point headstart, if you will," Isaac said."

I did appreciate this not-so-sly reference to Delta having to come up with version 2.0 of their new program.

I for one appreciate the opportunity to now stand by for an earlier flight for free.

This erroneous blog post made me squawk. It's been corrected, but as of Sunday the author was claiming wrong (and higher) LP earn levels. 250,000 for EXP! But then I checked here and this forum had not exploded, so I figured it was wrong;

Phew!

We’re spared for the coming year (undoubtedly all the backlash to Delta’s program changes may have influenced AA and UA). I think how the economy looks at the end of 2024 will heavily influence how things look next year.

Anecdotally, I’m already seeing some softness in premium fares on the domestic routes I fly for 2024 so there’s that…

First, I would like to thank Delta, an airline I never fly, for making the biggest faux pas of greed this year, having to walk some of it back after the public outcry, and likely putting fear of mileage gods into UA and AA--at least a teeny bit.
Next, I would like to thank AA because the only reason I refuse to buy up to upgrades is that I don't get LPs, which is silly. Great move, IMO. Also, while 1K LP is not big, it's LPs and it's bigger than seat coupons or priority boarding. Anything that is something is better than nothing, and all that empty philosophical jazz.
It's only the second year of LPs, and they already raised the Gold level last year, as well as the SWU level. It's nice to finally see things given and not taken.
Good job, AA.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they had already planned increases in qualification levels for the coming year, but rolled those back after the DL backlash.

AA has actually bought themselves time by changing the qualification year from Jan 1 to March 1; now they have 2+ months to respond to competitors.

And the SDC benefit for all members. I think you have to be AS MVPG75k to get SDC on AA. As someone who barely made plat, I am contemplating hopping to AS for this qualifying year now that AS has removed metal requirements and MVPG is a much more attainable OWS status via actually flown miles. I’m already tired of playing the LP game after a year, but these enhancements surely are making me think twice.

Apologize if this is somewhere in previous posts, but as an EXP who doesn't purchase cash upgrades, I really don't see many benefits to EXP. What am I missing?

For basic fare, I would have liked EXP to earn full loyalty points for the fare paid instead of the discounts 4.7 miles.

nothing exclusive to EXP beyond FFD mileage redemptions that are also avail to PPRO

Still no changes for the Million Miler program which is the worst compared to AS, DL, and UA's.

There's a huge cost to providing the benefits at the 250k level and I wouldn't have been surprised to see them bump it to 300k. They moved it from 200k to 250k for this year. Don't get me wrong, I'm elated. I'm also surprised to see the 20% and 30% kickers sticking around!

I was also pleasantly surprised by this. The "spend for LPs" approach must be proving profitable to AA.

very convenient to T4.

Credit card company operating an airline on the side

that’s an assumption. Today it refers to paid tickets, it says nothing about tomorrow.

you may be right but at least two experienced readers don’t read it the way you do- hence it’s ambiguous by definition.

i thought 6 months extra on flight credits was unambiguous, but it is and in a deceptive way. The email only went to members who are NOzT getting six more months then they used to.

Duplicate

once again. it refers specifically to 24 hr holds. this is not ambiguous. it is very specific and does not apply to award tickets. period. the fact that it says 'flights' and doesnt differentiate between award or revenue flights is irrelevant. "24 hour holds" differentiates between the two.

Yeah seriously. Seeing the number of posts here, Reddit, and blogs that are quoting the 18 month expiry date made me very happy indeed. And then I went on AA.com and saw the actual details:

"For Trip Credit issued on or after March 11, 2024, AAdvantage® members have 12 months to use their Trip Credit when canceling their trip on aa.com or the American app and their AAdvantage® number is included in their reservation. Non-AAdvantage® members have 6 months."

That already existed. Probably half of the things they listed as "improvements for AAdvantage members" already existed for everyone and just got cut back to members-only, then were listed as "improvements".

[This isn't lipstick on a pig. It's outright gaslighting, intentionally confusing, and I wish they could be hauled in front of some advertising standards authority and ordered to clarify that "No, we didn't add time for anyone...". At least they didn't torch their program this year like Delta did...]

I've been trying to parse the language in the announcement above and I think there is still an enhancement here, but could be wrong. I believe the current way of handling voluntary cancellations is by issuing Flight Credits which expire 12 months from original date of ticketing. The above seems to imply that cancelling via AA digital channels will result in a Trip Credit, and those expire 12 months from the date you cancel. So does the new policy not give you 12 months + the time between when you ticketed and cancel? That latter part could provide up to an additional 12 months of validity from what is currently offered.

I think if that was the case, it would have been called it out.
IMHO, “the app” is the AA app, and “buy-up” offers is paying to upgrade.

No. And you're cross posting the same question in multiple places, which is against FT rules https://www.flyertalk.com/help/rules#crossposting. Wait for an answer.

I'm expecting it is that way. Otherwise, we're about to see a lot of angry non-members who paid more for Main Cabin for flexibility, bought their ticket 7-11 months out, went to change/cancel 6 months after ticketing, and find out the ticket they paid more for flexibility is now worthless. Especially true if they could have bought a BE ticket and done the $99 cancellation fee.

Edit: Unless the $99 fee aspect would also have the same 6 / 12 month rule and could become non-changeable / cancelable for non-members who bought more than 6 months in advance. Seems like it could hurt far-in-advance bookings if they do it that way, however.

if it was a change and now applying to awards, they could phrase it exactly the same.

I had a flight credit expiring a few weeks back. So I bought a cheap flight ($94) and then cancelled it knowing that I would lose the $94 piece. I actually received a trip credit for the entire amount and an email from AA saying that they were changing the way they are doing credits so this would make sense. I forget the exact wording but basically said they were doing away with flight credits. Don't quote me because I didn't really look at in detail as I just took it as a bonus at the time!

To be honest, if they tried to pull that? That feels like a lawsuit waiting to blow up *bigtime* if AA doesn't warn folks of that very clearly. That's the sort of thing that is not reasonable for any consumer to presume.

I'm glad the opt-in upgrades now earn miles and presumably LP. I have a few credit cards that have annual airline credits that can only be used on upgrades, bags, etc. Given that I never pay for bags, I used to use them for e500s for companions. Now I end up using them mostly for op-ups which as an EXP sometimes seems like I'm wasting, but getting the miles/LPs gives it at least some value.

AA is certainly trying to put a positive spin on things, and I'm not going to defend their language choices. But fwiw, when I re-read the email they sent yesterday (versus the blog articles), they are pretty clear about the bolded part of the quote above, and in distinguishing between new benefits and old benefits that will now be limited to AAdvantage members only. (Red type reflects my emphasis).

For me, not huge changes but eliminated some of the annoying things I typically deal with.
- Prioritization of SWU above regular UG - i.e. SWU on international leg but wait listed for domestic leg and wind up in the overall UG pool, never made sense
- Companion status for SWU - if only one SWU open, always put Mrs. Deac83 in F/Biz first since I would clear a wait list first
- Booking SWU online - today if you finally find the SWU availability and it's a bad flying day with 60+ minute phone holds, you have to sweat it out. Never lost one because of this, but eliminates stress, plus many times the agent starts off with 'let me check if they are available'

The "extended trip credits" bit is still deceptive because it implies that they're adding six months of validity to said credits.

I think we also had at least one other person think that they were adding standby as an option (when it already exists at $0 for all people sans BE).

That being said, TPG (in particular) fouling this up in an attempt to do the airline's lifting for them is also about par for the course IMO.

Check the original message you should have received from AA. If includes this:

“Earn miles on upgrades: Want to treat yourself? Earn miles when you pay with cash to upgrade to a premium cabin.”

What you quoted from the OP is someone’s rewording of that change.