It is my first time to ask questions on flyertalk forum. Sorry for the hassle and thank you for your advices!

I am a new graduate student in Chicago and my home is in Shanghai, China. I enjoy MR and I have managed to become *A Gold on UA with less than $1,400 by DEQM promotion this Spring. The generous checked baggage allowance on UA (70 lbs*3) helped me a lot.

My motivation for status is primarily due to (with ranked order) bonus RDM, luggage allowance and priority check-in/waitlist/etc.. I am not a fan of business/first class, but I would like to fly in these classes if they are cheaper than economy class in terms of EQM/RDM after bonus. I am a graduate student in the quarter system, so I am busy during weekdays of academic years (late Sep-early Dec, early Jan-late Mar, early Apr-early Jun), but I have time during most of weekends and summer/winter/spring breaks.

During my graduate study, possibly postdoc afterwards in the US (5-10 years), I hope to become a lifetime *A Gold by flying. If possible, I would also like to be an Oneworld Platnium primarily by bonus miles (AA). I have done some research on the flyertalk forum, primarily based on the following two threads:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...d-summary.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/miles...ounge-etc.html

In *A, BM requires 10 years gold member while SA requires 6 years. I do not think I would fly SA since they require 50K miles on their flights to be a gold member. BM has an awesome program, but I am not sure I would fly frequently for 10 years and they might not even exist after 10 years... (Is the rumor that BM would merge with LH true?) Other than these two, OZ seems to have a reasonable requirement to accrue 1M miles on any *A flights. UA requires 1M accurate miles on their flights, which is sort of hard to achieve in 5-10 years for me. Any suggestions?

In Oneworld, the unpublished program on AA is great. I have managed to get some bonus miles by applying credit cards, but I do not think I could get 2M miles in 5-10 years just by applying credit cards. Are there any other advices for accruing non-flight miles on AA? Besides, is it worth for me to also have regular status on AA?

Thanks again!

Lifetime elites currently are currently exempt from some airline fees but I wouldnt count on it. The airlines and hotels are constantly changing the ff rules (REMEMBER: they alone write the ff rules) and most changes are reductions or elimination of ff benefits. Additionally airlines go bankrupt periodically and often there go any ff benefits.

MisterNice

Although I have been AA Plat for half a dozen years (by actual flying), their policy of baggage allowance for elites (which includes Gold, which btw needs only 1MM for lifetime) hasn't changed anything for a single bleep, since long before they instituted that I became a big fan of "carryon only" flying. It wasn't baggege fees that did it, it was the AA/BA combinaion constantly losing bags when connecting at LHR. The choices were ship ahead or carryon only, and the latter was much less expensive.

Meanwhile, I have also been churning Citi AA cards, and given that I don't fly for work (ie, no flights paid by someone else), the miles I get from that are much more than the bonus RDMs for flying as an elite. So I wouldn't veiw that as a top priority of status myslef. (And, btw, not all partners even given bonus RDMs for status; even though BA and some others recognize AA Plat status in other ways, like lounge access, they do not give bonus RDMs for having that status, on top of not even giving 100% miles in deep discount economy.)

Once you're carryon-only, btw, priority check-in is only useful when flying somewhere where you can't do online check-in or kiosk check-in. Every year that's fewer places.

When leads to prority boarding. That's a whole lot of work for just priority boarding! You didn't mention lounge access on int'l trips. To me that's more valuable, except:

Once I'm 2MM, I'm mostly going to start using miles (since I won't need to fly paid trips to requalify any more), so then I'm mostly always going to do business class redemptions on long overseas flights, and flying in business (even on miles award or miles+copay upgrade) I still get lounge access whether I have status or not.

So it's a whole bunch of things you didn't list (beyond priority boarding) that are the things that 2MM lifetime Plat will mean to me. First and foremost, it's beter treatment (than someone with no status, or even with lifetime Gold) during irregular ops (flight cancellations, missing a plane, etc). It's higher pecking order (than Gold) for "domestic" upgrades, it's ability to book exit row seats ahead of time (Gold gets that too), and it's getting into lounges on days I'm flying int'l even if I didn't upgrade (or get a business award).

But of all of those, as a 6' tall person, the exit row is the most important to me, and I've already got that "for life", given that I passed AA 1MM some time ago.

... Meanwhile, while churning Citi AA cards (while they still allow it, and if they "liike" you) may be the biggest source of RDMs, another one (that works for multiple airlines) is to always choose to eat at restaurants that give dining miles through Rewards Network (fka iDine), which runs AAdvantage Dining, as well as dining programs for most other major US-based airlines. You don't have to spend more, just change how you pick where to eat (when you would be eating out anyway). As long as you're living in big cities in the US, it's not that hard (if you, as opposed to your friends, can choose where to eat, that is). And if you eat out with freinds, and they let you pay on a (registered) card for everyone (and then they give you cash for their shares), well, then you can earn quite a bit of miles from dining.

The thing about bonus miles is to be concerned about the ones you can earn repeatedly, not the ones you can only earn once.

Meanwhile, even if you never got lifetime status, even if all you get is hundreds of thousands of RDMs, well, then you can choose sometimes to redeem those for business class, and get most of the benefits of status on those flights that way.