After a fifteen year career in which I did a lot of business travel, I retired in 2002. Since then, I have been busy starting my own business (of course, I have also taken a few well deserved vacations by redeeming miles).

Post March 1, I find myself in an interesting situation that I have never before experienced. I have plenty of miles - substantial 6 and 7 figure balances on all the major carriers. However, I have no status at all. Base member. Non elite. Tier level: Blue. You get the picture.

How much difficulty will I have redeeming future awards with no status? Any thoughts/advice?

Depends on the carrier.

With United, you have virtually the same chance as a top level elite. Only 1K members get access to special inventory, and that's only coach inventory. You have the same access to premium cabin awards as every other member. Your lack of status won't do you much good if you have to waitlist for an award -- and it's unlikely to get special treatment shaking loose award inventory when none is available -- but even without status you'll do quite well.

Continental availability... it's poor even if you're a platinum. I feel sorry for someone who isn't.

I understand Northwest makes additional inventory available for Platinums...

I've found that American has excellent award inventory, even for me without any status. Honestly they've always offered me the most flight options of any carrier. I only represent a single data point, but I've never been shut out checking award availability.

I'm a little surprised, with that performance, that you didn't hit lifetime Gold (1 million miles earned, any sources) with AAdvantage. There might be some ways to get that done yet, especially if you're close, by transfering a few miles.

That's if you care about such things. I think you've got an eviable problem with all those free trips available. Congratulations. Just make sure all those miles don't expire before you can enjoy them. One little trick is to donate 100 miles from an account to charity, and that satisfies the "activity" requirement in most programs.

The bright side: with a lot of 6 or 7 figure balances, it sounds like you will be able to spend the rest of your days in a premium cabin. That will get you pleasant treatment at the airport, which takes the bite off of traveling as a non-elite.

I'm a bit like you: I have miles across all programs, but I have run out of elite status everywhere except AA (thanks to 1MM). So I'll redeem coach awards where possible on AA and F/J on everyone else. I miss the elite statuses, but I do not miss the intense business travel.

Anyone know how DL handles this situation?

NW is the exception to this. Activity is considered adding to the account, not subtracting.

I agree with gleff about AA. My history with them has been fantastic (but I have status). On UA I've had success using their partner AC for awards with no difficulty, always first choice of flights. NW has been a bit of a dice roll but in fairness I was looking for some of the more difficult US-European awards at the best times - I did end of up getting what I needed.

You'll likely not have any problems with hotel awards, Hilton being the only one with capacity controls of significance.

Good luck buring the miles!

AA provides lifetime gold with one million AADV miles and lifetime platinum with 2 million. My wife enjoys the former and I the latter...if one of your balances is on AA, you might want to inquire about this.

drbrucer

I am a lifetime PLAT as well as my spouse on AA, and this means *zippo* when trying to secure seats. Maybe Plat Exec gets special access and special inventory, but AA PLAT does not.

Two recent experiences have me concerned that AA is falling for the Continental OnePass (aka "NonePass") "trap" of making too few seats available relative to miles sold annually:

1) needed two seats to Cabo (SJD) 2nd week of May. No go. Started trying to book them back in early feb and could not get a return flight at the base (plan-ahead) level.

2) needed five seats for DFW-MCO (Orlando) Thanksgiving week. While I realize MCO is a high-demand city and my need is for a high-demand week, *still* I too had never had problems getting domestic 25K seats on AA *this* far out. And what exposes the "rawness" of this lack of availability is the plentiful number of cheap seats still available (according to orbitz under $300) for the same routing and times, indicating to me AA is still pricing them as if there is plenty of unsold seats...but just not willing to allocate them to 25K seat awards. Could not find even a single seat, mcuch less five, for the travel dates I needed...

So, what was once the model IMO for being very prolific to SELL the miles, yet to make proportionate seats available...the AAdvantage program I have been so fond of over the years...has lost some lustre with me in recent months. Hope the trend is reversed and we don't read more and more of this. Continental has really ruined their affinity program's reputation and I now go to active lengths to avoid flying them even on a paid basis...why accululate worthless "Nonepass" affinity points ?

[This message has been edited by ILUVCITIBANK (edited Mar 14, 2004).]

As someone who flies out of MCO, I assure you, that even though there are cheap(er) fares available right now, all of those planes will be full the week of Thanksgiving. Looking for rewards tickets at the "discounted" level for that time frame, especially for MCO is not realistic. Even Southwest blacks out those dates for award redemption, and they easily have the most lax rules for redeeming award tickets. AA is not even telling you that you can't have a seat, but, they are just not willing to give one away at a discounted point value level. I am not sure that you have much of a gripe there.

Regards,
Stevekoe

Your correct, EXP does get a bit more inventory, and some latitude even then.

Glad to hear the exec PLATs get this perk - leaves some upside to strive for.

[This message has been edited by ILUVCITIBANK (edited Mar 15, 2004).]

I haven't quite hit the million mile mark with American. However, American really is not the problem - I haven't had a difficult time redeeming awards on American or United. I have the most miles with CO and NW, both of which have had scarce award availability when I was top level elite. Now that I am base level, I worry about ever redeeming awards with them.