Unlocking AAdvantage Gold: American Airlines' most basic elite status
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Yesterday, I received an email from American Airlines confirming what I already knew. After 29 years of life, I had become the most basic type of elite human according to the American Airlines AAdvantage travel reward program.
Here is the "main text" of the email with my AAdvantage number obscured:
The benefits appear meager, although TPG values them at $970 a year.
To accomplish this achievement, I collected over 3,000 EQMs (Elite Qualification Miles, i.e. miles flown, sometimes adjusted according to fare class, with a minimum of 500 per segment) and EQDs (Elite Qualification Dollars, i.e. U.S. dollars spent, sometimes with a multiplier).
Last year, I was close to reaching the qualification threshold, but failed when I became utterly hosed due to a misunderstanding of the complex terms & conditions for earning EQMs. What a bummer that was (as tweeted):
My mileage request to
@AmericanAirhas been denied due to "invalid codeshare". My dreams of becoming #elite in 2017 crushed.Turns out my flight #IB5063 was only marketed by
@Iberia, and was operated by@vueling, which isn't a@traveloneworldaffiliate. http://web.archive.org/web/20171214141522/https://www.aa.com/i18n/travel-info/partner-airlines/iberia.jsp
After that incident, I vowed to never chase elite status again. To rub salt in the wound, American Airlines gave a lab mate of mine Platinum status out of the blue. I struggled so hard to earn status by the book and failed due to a technicality. Meanwhile, they were handing out higher statuses to those who put in no work. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who's ripped about this practice:
So let me get this straight. I spent $6,000 and flew 50,000 miles to earn Platinum. I need another 50,000+$6K to requalify while someone with this offer can do it for only 12,500+$1.5K. I got 0 free upgrades for my earned status while they get 20? And now there's a whole bunch of people tied with me for upgrades for the next 3+ months that didn't earn it. What a crock.
A good life lesson: you can't expect life to be fair... plan accordingly. While I took a vow of #noloyalty, as I started accumulating EQMs with American in 2018, I couldn't resist the temptation to "level up".
Overall, I've been happy with American Airline's service, despite some bumps. As a non-elite passenger up until this point, much of my success has relied on being a nice & charming individual (i.e. good old fashioned social engineering). Now I will have an introductory level elite status badge next to my name!
Critique
Flying consumes much fossil fuel! Bad for planet! Shame on @dhimmel for gloating in his status of most basic elite level of maester polluter. Critique-of-the-critique: I am such a savvy traveler that airlines likely endure a great financial loss by doing business with me.
Any benefits for an amazing companion? I'll make sure to minimize your carbon footprint.
Well we can now book reward travel less than 21 days in advance without a $75 fee. Great for last minute getaways.
See also the TPG resource Elite Status Benefits that Extend to Family and Companions, which unfortunately is a bit outdated.
We will find every benefit!
No benefit left untapped!
Yes, there is .... @dhimmel will be bringing you lots of presents from his trips now.
As someone who has flown far too much for work I see these status hikes as more of an acknowledgement of the chain around your neck. As I get older the slower I prefer slower more in-depth travel. It is still nice to get some perks however.
Haha indeed. The status is itself a chain around the neck as you become beholden to an airline just because it offers you a slightly less bad experience than the rest.
While I agree with your point, the complex status terms & conditions help gamify travel, such that the misery is the same but at least there seems to be a higher prupose one is working towards.
Yes. They are better than nothing. But as someone who has held gold status on three global networks simultaneously; you come to hate flying after a while ;-) Fortunately I don't fly anywhere near that amount these days.
It must be nice to get that membership status, though, eventhough it is not an important thing in person's life.
For some people, such status is VERY important. Personally, I am still willing to maintain my friendships with those of lesser stature.
Congrats on this impressive milestone Daniel :) I fly a lot too but to make my flights as cheap as possible, I fly with all kinds of airlines and it would probably take me foverever to collect enough miles with any of them to achieve something like that :)
Yes, in most cases you might as well just fly with the cheapest option #noloyalty. However, out of PHL, the cheapest itinerary is usually American, since it's a hub. Hence, for all but one of my itineraries this year, I chose the cheapest.
Also much of my non-business travel is "award travel" where you redeem airline miles for the ticket. Usually I get these miles by churning credit cards. This award travel does not count towards elite status. However, sometimes you can get amazing deals, like when @trang and I round-tripped PHL to MMH for a total of 40,000 miles. Now there's a transcontinental itinerary to a pricey destination at the lowest redemption rate + 10% discount from my Aviator Red Mastercard.
Wow, obviously, it pays off to watch these things. Here in the Czech Republic, you can collect miles with the national train operator (Czech Railways), not with the airlines though (at least that´s what I think).
The good thing is there is a very tough competition among different European lowcost airlines and you often get to fly from one country to another for literally several bucks (Euros).
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