Possible Changes to AA's Lifetime Status?

Since the "Great MilePoint Outage" seems to be over, I figured I'd add this to our AA forum. Conversation is already loud and rampant on TOBB with speculation and theories.

The basics:

• If you sign into your account using mobile.aa.com, a new section has been added to the account summary that indicates AA might be planning to curb the types of miles that count for Lifetime status by using the language "select mileage activity" when refering to qualifying lifetime status miles.
• No official change or announcement has been made by AA. It's all rumor and speculation at this point.
• It is not showing up on the normal AA.com website, though tech savvy FFers seem to indicate the coding on the normal website is showing the signs of splitting mileage into a seperate MillionMiler section.

Here is a picture of what you see when you log into the mobile.aa.com site:


*the link at the end entitled "Million Miler program" loops back to the main mobile.aa.com page*

Do we transfer our starwood points NOW to make sure it's included in the total before they change the rules for lifetime accumulation?

About time they need to change given how generous AA is with their mileage promotions

darn. I hope this is still a ways out. I would very much like to keep including credit card spending and bonuses on my mission to 1,000,000 miles.

Thanks for posting the pic, DD - my phone shows the info but in a less-well-formatted way,

I've always thought that the AAdvantage practice of awarding lifetime Gold and Platinum lifetime status inclusive of CC miles and other non-flight-related mileage was over-generous. My guess is that they felt that driving people to carry the CitiAadvantage cards brought in enough profit (from the sale of miles to the card issuers) to negate any negative aspects.However, with baggage fees now pumping significant dollars to AMR's bottom line (making the red ink less red), there are a number of non-flying golds who will never pay those fees.

Another thought that crossed my mind is whether this is the first step in the process of amalgamating the different oneWorld FF programs, to make them more alike. Imagine a scenario in AA and the other carriers adopt the BA two tiers structure, resulting in the discontinuation of AA Gold (and OW Ruby), leaving only two tiers?? (again, this is just idle speculation on my part, nothing more).

That would really sucks, for me. I'm very close to 1MM. And with my luck, I'm sure they'll close the program when I'm at 989,999.

It's not hard to get 10,001 miles on AA at all Just get them now

What a revolting development.

Weird that I was just looking at my LT AA miles today in my records, not online, thinking about how to reach the promised land, and not aware of what was being said on TOBB™.

But I'm not at 989,999 yet.
This topic is horrific. It's like telling Charlie Sheen there won't be any more cocaine left in the world.

LOL! He'll really be hitting that tiger blood hard if that were the case.

Well let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. I tried to stress in my OP that this is all just speculation since no official announcement has been made.

That being said, anyone who has had their finger on the AA news pulse for the last 6 months could have told you rumors were running amok that a change to the lifetime status program was coming down the pipe, and these changes (whether intentional or a programmer error) seem to indicate those rumors were true. If there is a change coming, it might not be so bad, or it might be some people's worse nightmare. For me personally, I fly AA at least one a month and have been EXP since joining the program, so lifetime status hasn't been on my radar just yet.

Let's see how it pans out....

The fact that the president of AAdvantage is doing a MilePoint conversation in two weeks can't excactly be a coinky-dinky

(Actually it's smart of her to get out in front of the issue),

Last year, I finally made it past 1 MM mile goal. I'm marching toward 2 MM now, albeit at a much slower pace in the past.

Since I don't foresee that I would get to 2 MM in the next 5 years (even under the current terms of this unpublished program/benefit - call it what you will), I certainly won't get there for quite some time if it's BIS miles only. On some level, I've decided to not stress about it given I can't do much to change where I stand

This could be good or bad depending on how you see it. i see it both ways - bad that i will never be at 1MM since i pay for all my miles. Good - since i m so far off from 1MM, i can just give up now and cut my future losses ;-)

I think I am so nervous that the thinking circuits in my brain seem to have frozen. Could you please remind me what TOBB is?

Flyertalk

TOBB = The Other Bulletin Board

They got a jump on conversation due to the outage we had, so it's 10 pages deep...

Actually, it probably is. She has much bigger fish to fry.

Any modification will immediately affect only a limited number of AAdvantage members and probably will be a much smaller change than is being "imagined."

TOBB has all sorts of rampant speculation on what will and won't count.
Seems to me the most logical result of a change would be that 1) anything already earned stays earned as they'd have no way to sort it out retroactively, and 2) the obvious resulting rule will be to bring it in line with all AA's competitors in that only BIS miles will count going forward.

I wouldn't count on any special rules making AA's MM program as attractive as it has been in the past. And fwiw the program has been extremely generous. I'm not happy but I can hardly complain. I made my 2mm, wife is at 1.5mm and I guess she'll have to fly the last 500k. So it'll take 5-10 years more now, during which she'll have yearly status from flying anyway.

My only indecision about all this is whether to send her 250k from SPG right now and risk it not counting. If they don't count, then the last thing I need is another 250k AA miles to add to our collection.

You're certainly correct on the smallish number, especially relative to the masses of AAdvantage members who think that the RDM part of AAdvantage is the entire program (nothing wrong with that, for them).

Hmmm, "far bigger fish" raises interesting possibilities, To me, the beluga whale of changes would be a unified FF program uniting AA with BA/IB in a single program (as with Flying Bue after the AF/KL merger). Could they have that kind of monemental change ready this quickly?

I suspect her goals are to establish a more public persona and expand AA's social media presence. Beyond that, two big "gets" would be the ability to search for and book oneworld/partner awards online and SWU use on oneworld metal.

I don't long for a combined mega-program. AAdvantage is much more generous and flexible than any other oneworld program, or any other US program, for that matter.

+1 on all that. I think a FF program merge would be a downgrade for AAdvantage users. YQ on awards? Higher redemption rates? Much more likely in a combined BA/IB/AA program. A merger would allow them to restructure in a way they couldn't individually, and it will definately be to the benefit of the airline, not the consumer.

Really hope to book partner/OW awards online in the near future. A smaller "get" from my point of view would be 100% mileage accrual on CX/QF etc.

As similar rumors have come up over the past several years, I contune to think that it would be in AA's short term interest to give some warning before changing the rules as to which miles count. Although I agree it will effect a limited number of AAdvantage members, many of those who will be effected are very adept at earning miles. No doubt, they have probably been called loco from time to time by non-FF friends, relatives and significant others. Aren't those the same folks likely to engage in behavior that would put short term revenue into AA's pockets, such as buying miles or e-shopping or ??? if given some advance notice of changes to the program?

Obviously, this short term benefit may be out-weighed by the longer term benefits that are driving such a move. I assume to some extent that those with LT status are less loyal than those who still need to earn status for the year, but the same could be true of members as they pass each earning (and especially the highest) threshold for the year. WIth LT Gold, I don't need to fly AA, but the elite benefits still make it my first choice.

I admit that this is probably my own wishful thinking as I need 130K miles to hit LT Platinum and the bulk of those mile will be posted when a credit card closes early next month. -- Suzanne

Nor do I - and as I read your response, I realized that a single unified program would face regulatory obstacles (for one reason because the BA/IB holding company doesn't (can't) own a controlling interest in AA).

As you allude to, maybe an environment where AA retains its excellent program and which enhances international options (like UA/LH without any blocking) might be the best of

Not to go too OT, but couldn't AA just sell AAdvantage and spin it off much like Air Canada did with Aeroplan?

This has actually been discussed several times, with some of their bigger partners trying to make a play for it (at least as far back as 1999) but since AAdvantage is the only consistent profit-making division of AA, the airline has always refused.

The beluga whale is neither a fish nor is AA allowed to fry it (Alaska might be, in limited quantities). And as far as whales are concerned, it's one of the smaller ones. If you're looking for a big fish, maybe a whale shark fits the bill

As far as MM status is concerned, I rarely fly AA (being an SFO-based *A flyer), but just looking at my account I currently have nearly 250,000 LT miles. At least half of them are from credit card bonuses and credit card charges. With transfers I could probably make it to about 500,000 in the short term, but it's probably not worth doing if the rule going forward is that only BIS count. Even in my primary program (UA) I don't really pay a whole lot attention to lifetime status. At my current rate of flying it will be at least another 5 years, and who knows what the program or the airline industry looks like at that time.