Depends on the program and how you achieve it. Some of the perks are listed above and some (all?) programs have both short term and lifetime status.

lwildernorva - great post and great advice. I'm in the same position as you are - only earned about 250k AA miles through credit card before they changed the rules, so I don't even dream about having million miler status ever in my life.

I would say for 90% of regular flyers, lifetime MM benefits will not apply. If you are a heavy flyer (100K+ miles a year), you should be achieving top elite status on most airline and in less than 10 years, you will achieve MM status. For those who are actively top tier elite status flyers, MM doesn't mean much except for bragging rights or in the case of United, getting your spouse the same elite status. It becomes more helpful when your travel pattern changes where you don't fly as often and the airline will still provide decent benefits to you. However with many people being able to get "elite" benefits by paying for them or owning a credit card, I don't know if these benefits are really as valuable as they once were.

Good point.

Million Mile Status
 

One perk for million mile status I haven't seen mentioned is the ability to get exit row seating when booking. That is a big deal to me. Also, with United, when I obtain million mile status I will be lifetime gold and my wife will get gold also. Many times we travel on slightly different itineraries so her having status will help with seat selection, baggage and check in. I traveled a lot on business before I retired so I have million mile on AA and am approaching it with United. This is my last year with any status on United so I'm trying to close the gap as much as I can this year.

can one get MM status with credit card purchases? if so, that can be easy with ownership of a firm.. many of my suppliers demanded immediate payment and accepted a credit card(guess i was deemed untrusty). air travel payments for employees add up. i generated a couple hundred thousand miles a year buying inventory. most of it on starwood amex, which does not have a MM package, but allows transfer of miles to many airlines(and at 1.2 to 1) . i have a ton of miles on LH. they have no mm program either.

i don't really need mm status, as i have enough miles to fly in biz class tatl when i want to go any distance. short flights, what's the diff?

AA used to count any kind of miles-flights, credit cards, etc. Now I think it's BIS miles only. UA has always been that way although they did allow bonus flight miles when they merged with Continental which is how I got so many lifetime UA miles. While SPG doesn't have a "million mile" program, they do have a lifetime status program based on number of nights stayed. I got lifetime Gold with SPG that way.

To answer your question, main benefit to me is that I don't fly business/first on domestic flights because it's not worth the extra miles/$$ to me. However, where I don't have status like United/Delta/US Air, I don't like regular coach because invariably the guy in front of me puts his seat back and I have no room for anything. Having status allows me to get economy plus, exit row, bulkhead, etc.

These are good points, and also consider the FF programs get diluted as time goes on. And the lifetime is for the lifetime of the current program not your lifetime or even the lifetime of the airline.

This used to be a bigger deal than it's going to be in the future, and on the other hand it's not absoultely clear if this will always remain a beenefit of lowest-rung status.

It used to be that the only seats with legroom like exit row seats were actual exit row seats (and then only some of them on some planes!), and you couldn't buy them ahead of time no matter how much money you had.

But now the trend is to put a bigger legroom section on the plane (E+ on UA, which had it all in place until it merged with CO and now has to get back to having it all in place again, EC on DL, and the upcoming MCE on AA). And the whole reason those are becoming popular with airlines is because they've realized they can sell those seats as an added cost option.

So while in the past elite status was the only way to get into exit rows, in the future incremental money will get you into E+/EC/MCE even without status (at least on mainline planes, and with some airlines even on many RJs).

(Though status will lower the cost and ease of getting into E+/EC/MCE, it will do it for only one of the majors, while incremental money will work on more than one.)

Now, incremental money is a cost, of course, but it has to be compared with the cost of getting to MM status (if your "natural" flying does not get you there "automatically").

One Million, Two Million, Three Million, Four...
 

Guys: This post seems fairly active on the Million Mile issue, so here goes. I am closing in on my 2MM Status on United (I flew 17 years out of SFO, then moved to IAH, so the merger didn't hurt me). I suspect it will take another 2-4 years to reach the 2MM mark, but at my age I will never see 3MM.

My question is relatively simple, has there ever been any competent information (not necessarily a peer-reviewed, double-blind study) on what percentage of travelers fly this much? I'm thinking that most people in the USA fly less than 25,000 miles a year (maybe 75-85%), but after that, I have no concept. Then, how many stick with it to fly 1,000,000 miles? <1%? extrapolating further, what percentage is crazy enough to put 2MM BIS miles on their body, etc., et al.

Any thoughtful replies would be appreciated, regards....

I'm not aware of any studies but I would guess it is an extremely low percentage of the general population. For example, I am almost at 1 million on United and have 3.5 million on AA and I would guess that if i add up everyone I know they wouldn't hit those numbers.

On the other hand, compared to a lot of people on this board, I am just getting started!

It's way way way way way way less than 1%. Look at it this way: To get 2MM BIS miles in 20 years means you have to fly at least 100,000 a year annually. That puts you at a high elite level annually. But it's a fairly small number of people in any given year who even get to that level. And then how many of them keep up for 20 years?

These statistics (of yearly status level) are probably easier to find that the million miler statistics.

(Of the general population it's below miniscule, since most of the general population does not even fly enough to ever get status anywhere. So all that even matters is the percentage of one-time-ever elites who evenually get lifetime status and even that is tiny because so many people are only lowest level elite plus so many people are not even elite consistently every year.)

Also, at some airlines (dunno if UA/CO is one of them through either the UA or CO branch), it was easier to earn MM in the past than today, but once you earn it, you keep it. AA was the last one (until Dec 2011 you could earn AA MM from all miles from all sources, not just BIS), but it wasn't the only one to count non-BIS toward MM, if you go back far enough in time.

So while going foward MM is BIS only, counting how many people have MM status already is a different story, because of historical changes to MM earning.

(And I'm a perfect example of this. As someone who basically never flies for work, and didn't start flying much at all until in my late 40s, there's no way I'd ever have gotten MM anywhere if I hadn't learned on FT years ago about all AA miles from all sources back then counting toward MM, and started working on that, with a sense of "urgency" which turned out to be warranted, since I made 2MM "just in the nick of time" in 2011.)

You mention AA and UA only, but if DL is an option and you have great credit and can find a way to put huge charges on credit cards (business expenses for your or a friend's business, tax payments, etc), there's a way to get to 1MM pretty quickly: Get two Amex DL Reserve cards (one biz, one consumer version) and two Amex DL Platinum cards (one of each flavor as well). You'll get 30K MQMs off the bat, then if you charge exactly $60K to each reserve card and $50K to each Plat card per year ($220K total), you'll net another 100K MQMs per year. To boot, you'll be earning almost 1.5 RDMs/$ as well, because of bonuses there. Some hefty annual fees, but companion certificates offset if you utilize them. Get two more Reserve cards in a spouse/partner/friend/family member's name, spend for them, then transfer the MQMs to yourself and pick up another 60K MQMs (160K MQMs in all) per year. First year, you'll have 190K MQMs and by year 5 you'll have 1MM status if the rules remain the same. Fly a resonable amount and you can cut it to 3 or 4 years. Along the way, you'll maintain Diamond status. Have at it! :D

DL MM in 13 years with no BIS:

DL Platinum credit card, $50k spend: 20k/yr.
DL Reserve credit card, $60k spend: 30k/yr.
Spouse's DL Reserve CC, $60K spend, gift miles to me, 30k/yr.

I'm also a member of Exclusive Resorts who offers 50k/yr. (little known to the FT community because of the high cost to join + annual membership), so for me that brings it down to 8 years. But of course I travel as well, otherwise why would MM mean anything to me? Will cross MM threshhold later this year.

There are cases of lifetime status not being honored in a merger (ie BMI lifetime != BA lifetime...lifetime status went out the window with the merger)