I’m a lifetime AA Platinum. Even I rarely get upgraded these days, with so many Exec Platinums around. But the early boarding, and particularly access to their “main cabin extra” seats with more leg room is a decent benefit, as well as priority rebooking if there is a cancellation or missed connection.
Now that I don’t travel that much, my main purpose in accumulating miles is for free travel - particularly to Europe. So I would weigh which airline you want to frequent with that in mind. Where do you want to go with your miles/points?
Somebody told me that for upgrades among status groups (so within the Plat category) they prioritize people who currently fly the most over those who have status for other reasons such as lifetime or purchased - is that true?
it really depends on which segments you are talking about right?
For example, it’s a tough upgrade for SJC-DFW-SJC. Limited flights, many elites on there.
versus SFO-LAX-SFO easy upgrade.
Dan, again my information may be slightly outdated, but typically for domestic upgrade requests it will be by date of request and then by timestamp of checkin.
This is what I assume, which would make sense. If you have two Plats, one of whom is very active and purchasing lots of tickets, and the other (me) who flies a few times per year, I’d expect them to give the seat to the guy spending the money. When I was flying a lot more, I got domestic upgrades probably 80% of the time, now it’s more like 20%.
With just AA Gold, I do get upgrades but only on some routes - ORD - LGA mostly and never, even when I was Platinum ORD - SFO.
One thing Todd might want to do is to register his business with AA Business Exxtra with himself as the travel planner - you do accumulate Exxtra points towards other types of awards (like Gold status certificates, upgrades etc) which can help as well.
AA Gold is definitely worth it. You get a little mileage bonus plus upgrades. I have been upgraded 5 out of my last 6 segments. Even got one on a USair flight to Philly from ORD which is sort of odd. You also get standby and preference in case of delays over non-status and free MCE seats 24 hours before departure. My wife lost her status and it sucks.
Todd - I live about 5 min from Geneva. Let me know when you are coming out.
regardless of how much you are traveling, you would be best served to nonetheless book your ticket with AA as opposed to Southwest, even if paying slightly more. To be able to pool your miles in a proper mileage program that permits redemptions in an alliance like one world, will give you more options and provide greater value than Southwest’s Rapid Rewards program. Applying for the CC will give you some additional benefits, which are useful if you can’t hit the gold threshold.
Idle thought here that just popped into my iddy biddy brain: being able to use priority check-in takes on a whole new meaning when you’re traveling internationally. When we spent 5 weeks in Brazil last year zigzagging back and forth across Brazil a lot of our flights were on brand new One World partner TAM because they were purchased by LAN before we arrived in Brazil. That meant I was the first or second person in a priority check in line for just about every flight while in Brazil and I can’t tell you how long just about every regular line was. Stereotypical third world check-in process that takes literally in excess of an hour to navigate. It saved us tons of time and frustration.
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