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American Airlines Buy Up to Elite Status Offer.

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What a Joke.

View from the Wing wrote about AA’s CEO, Doug Parker’s comments on Mileage Running – a slap in the face of a large community who enjoyed flying, and earning status by making use of 1 mile flown, 1 mile earned. It’s that attitude that led me to drop any attempt to achieve status with American this year ( I’m currently Executive Platinum). I mean no status. I’m not even going to go after Gold. Why would I go for Gold when I can just challenge for Platinum later in 2018 ( you can’t do this if you hold any status whatsoever.) Another reason is I’ll end the year at a minimum with Alaska Gold, maybe 75k, and I’m planning on going after British Airways Silver or Gold ( depending on the results of my requested status match) so I can select seats, and have lounge access domestically. Regardless, I was till interested to see what my offer would be to Buy up to Elite Status.

Here’s my current progress

At the beginning of the year I thought that I would try for Top Tier in both airlines. My travel plans changed quite a bit, and Alaska also announced that earning on AA flights would drop dramatically. As a result, I did credit flights to AA somewhat, but for the most part avoided the practice.

a screenshot of a graph

AA’s buy up to Elite Status offer for Gold AND Platinum

a close up of a card

Verdict: Not even close to worth it

American offers status challenges all the time. In fact, if you do them post July you’ll retain status for that year and the following. Meaning, if I were to challenge for Platinum in July of 2018 and meet the requirements I’d keep the status until Feb 2020. I’m not even sure I’d care to do that…if I get mid-tier status with British Airways I will gain access to Main Cabin Priority and Extra seating, and I can use all the Admirals clubs when flying domestically. The only real thing that I can see that would make AA’s Platinum status worth it is no $75 close-in booking fee, and use of 500 mile upgrades.

Gold…for $749 – ya, right.

 

Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.

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4 Comments

  • Gino November 3, 2017

    Interesting. I’m currently Gold with fewer EQMs and EQDs than what you showed and my buy-up offer to Gold was only 699. Still not even close to worth it.

  • Aland November 3, 2017

    2M with AA so Platinum for life … 2nd highest rung, whoops I’m mean, 3rd highest rung. 17th on list today for One Upgrade (and I’d pay for it) so this Diamond (upgrades all bad, but Delta has 25% more domestic 1st seats on average) suggests passing on paying (miles or dollars) to get any elite upgrade. Get a CC for bag and boarding.

  • Aland November 3, 2017

    2M with AA so Platinum for life … 2nd highest rung, whoops I’m mean, 3rd highest rung. 17th on list today for One Upgrade (and I’d pay for it) so this Diamond (upgrades all bad, but Delta has 25% more domestic 1st seats on average) suggests passing on paying (miles or dollars) to get any elite upgrade. Get a CC for bag and boarding.

  • ss November 3, 2017

    My husband who takes an American flight once every 2 years got an offer to try Platinum for free through the end of the year. He got the offer several months ago. Never took them up on it. Hmm

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