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American Airlines has announced more changes to their frequent flyer program AAdvantage. This comes hot on the heels of the changes announced earlier this year. The changes are numerous and include the introduction of a new tier of membership: Platinum Pro.
Platinum Pro
From 2017 onwards, you can start earning towards the new Platinum Pro level, which will make a great addition to the program, especially for those travelers who do not fly enough to earn the current Executive Platinum but feel that they should get a bigger reward than they are currently getting. The new tier is earned after 90 flight segments, or 75k EQM’s (Elite Qualifying Miles). The benefits of the new tier include but are not limited to the following:
- Oneworld Sapphire status
- Unlimited complimentary upgrades, in 500-mile markets
- 72-hour upgrade window
- 2 free checked bags
- 9 award miles for every dollar spent.
In the later stage of 2017, more additional changes will be implemented into the overall program:
- Upgrade prioritization: passengers will be ranked according to their Elite status levels, followed by how many EQD where earned in the last 12 months.
- Upgrades on award tickets: Executive Platinum members can now use their complimentary 500-mile upgrades on award tickets from American Airlines.
Earning EQD’s with Credit Cards
AAdvantage Aviator Blue, Aviator Red, and Aviator Business MasterCard’s, will earn $3,000 EQD’s for spending $25,000 on qualifying purchases during the year.
AAdvantage Aviator Silver MasterCard will be able to earn up to $6,000 EQD’s for spending $50,000 in a calendar year. Card holders will earn $3,000 after the first $25,000 spent, and will then earn an additional $3,000 EQD’s after reaching a $50,000 spend on qualifying purchases.
Finally
This is good news for a lot of regular travelers who don’t quite fly enough to earn Executive Platinum. Also, American is also making their invite-only level ConciergeKey a published tier in its own right. If you regularly fly AA enough to earn elite status, make sure you keep up to date on the changes they publish.
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Platinum Pro members also get complimentary access to the Admirals Club when on Transatlantic, Transpacific flights (even if it’s a connection or economy), not on domestic flights tho.
The part that bugs me is that if you are PlatinumPro and you get notice 72 hours before the flight that you have an upgrade, what’s going to happen when a concierge or Exec Plat walks in right before the flight and bumps you out of the upgrade that you had “guaranteed” before the flight and there are no other seats available to keep your upgrade? Doesn’t sound like such a great deal. My airport has a lot of concierge and Exec Plats that totally screw up using my 500 mile upgrades. Between my wife and I we have almost 100 upgrades but can hardly ever use them!!
Not sure if I am happy about the changes to AA’s mileage… too much keep track of.
What I am really concerned about is whether AA will exempt intentional addresses from the EQD requirements…otherwise, it’s gonna be very hard to keep two accounts in gold(second elite tier)..
Really hoping to see one of those changes to be the addition of a co-branded credit card in Canada.
This is great news for someone like me who doesn’t fly a lot but spends a lot 🙂
These changes were really disheartening because I otherwise would have requalified for Platinum with their traditional distance-based miles earning, but now I’ll just be Gold. Still, I didn’t requalify for status on either United or Delta, however, so I will continue to fly AA/OW carriers next year. Come 2018 I will be unaffiliated, I imagine. Southwest here I come 🙂
I still think AA has the best program around everything is changing that’s the nature of the beast
Some may disagree, but even the lowest tier, AAdvantage Gold, has been well worth my loyalty to AA this year. Maybe I travel fairly lonely short hops, but I’ve had great success with the <500 complimentary upgrades.
Moved right into the worst. Stay as loyal to AA as they are to you. Jetsmarter sure looks like the right move
I wonder why the Citi AA credit cards don’t provide EQD through spending.
It’s all about the agreements in place with credit card issuers on the program. Perhaps something we’ll see in the future.
The points and miles “game” is certainly changing the travel world for consumers. I know that the “game” has very positively affected my ability to travel for pleasure. I suppose that in the grand scheme, when it comes to business travel, the “game” really hasn’t changed that much at all since business travelers will still have to travel and the business is still going to pay for them to do it so… time for me to find a job with more business travel so that I can get more pleasure travel opportunities off of the points/miles earned! And the CC sign-up bonuses of course!
This is expected as more and more people get into the miles “game.”
AA is only too happy to screw their long time customers once again. As a lifetime platinum, I will not have lifetime third tier status and if not for the new credit card eqd’s allowed for the silver card, I would not even bother keeping my exp.
At least United lets you earn lifetime status in all of their top tiers including Global Services.
AA should do the same including concierge key
Great to see tiers will be easier for non frequent flyers to acheive with AA from now on. Just hope we don’t see any major devaluation again soon!
I wish there were benefits for those don’t fly on a weekly basis. But I guess that goes with the the term frequent. I fly about once a month but il still never meet the minimum requirements.
I am very glad that I am no longer an AA captive member. There’s been a lot of change.