Concierge Key or bust.
I quit chasing status. If I want a seat up front I buy a seat up front. Period. I cannot tell you how many times I bought up front and it sold out more than 30 days in advance of flight time. Upgrade lists 40+ deep are the norm these days. I board up front and then watch ExPlat after ExPlat file by and cram themselves into every seat in rows 6-15. So much for perks.
Living in CLT I was Chairman Preferred on USAir for years given I travel for a living. But I also had a long history with AA (million miler) when I was in Boston. After the merger I became a 2 million miler and maintained EXP up until this year. My travel changed and this year only made PLTPro. Now I am in purgatory. Anything other than EXP is shit. As someone mentioned, upgrades are impossible for anything other than puddle jumpers. SWUs are almost impossible for travel to Europe. Like others, I find myself buying F class tickets for non-work domestically and business class when miles will not work, which seems to be more often than not. Part of the problem, I think, is that I fly out of a major hub. The US-AA merger diluted the upper tier so much that anything less than EXP is worthless.
I can tell you it was already pretty bad, even before this. As just a PLT, I rarely got upgraded in the last couple of years before the merger (and this was 5 years ago, I haven’t traveled on business since 2015).
My company never paid for business travel, even on long trips, so I’m “used” to cattle class, business was always just a nice lucky perk when it happened. But it used to happen a lot more often 10+ years ago.
As for paying to sit up front: I honestly can’t justify paying the difference in ticket price between coach and business/first, except in rare instances where there isn’t that much difference between them (last minute purchase, some kind of special deal, etc.). I also can’t imagine why companies pay for business travel either, it’s an incredible waste of money. And if they didn’t pay it, the number of business seats would shrink, coach seats would get better. Kind of pisses me off how there are so many business seats on flights these days, particularly international. It’s also a ridiculous waste of CO2.
I really don’t understand the complimentary upgrade process. I’m Platinum for Life, and never get offered a chance to move up, and I’ve been on flights with empty seats in First Class.
An FFS program is essentially a compound option, namely an option on another option. It begins to decay upon purchase. Note that no carrier has been known to realize convexity losses for selling these compound options to travelers. This would indicate that FFS programs are not worth their price. Moreover, if a traveler must spend so much money, just to reach the opportunity to decide if an FFS program is worthwhile, the answer is self-presenting.
Do you request the upgrade on line for domestic routes and do you have enough 500 mile upgrades to cover it? For international I believe you have to call.
George
AA does sell buy-ups at the end of the year if you are close to EXP; but with credit card EQMs and a few reasonably priced J trips to Europe it is not hugely expensive to get there. EQD makes things a bit harder but you can offset some of the with credit cards too.
And for the upgrade question above, as an AA Plat you must (a) request upgrades (possible to do so when buying a ticket online, not just by phone) and (b) have a sufficient amount of 500-mile upgrade certificates in your account. As a plat I got a reasonable number of upgrades when I flew domestic.
Thanks. I have the 500-mile upgrades and use those occasionally. However, I don’t travel much for business anymore, so I’m running out of them. Most of my traveling has been home to the family farm, so pretty lucky using them.
But people talk about getting complimentary upgrades, and I have only gotten upgraded a couple of times at Christmas.
As Plat Pro (75K miles per year) and Ex Plat (100K) you get complimentary upgrades. As a Gold or Plat you can get complimentary upgrades (no 500-mile certificates) on short flights (<500 miles).
I’m in the same boat although still employed. All my work travel is domestic. Given the increase in EQD requirement to $15k and the cutback on the Aviator card’s potential for EQDs from $6k to $3k, I’ll be about $5k short. I fly mostly transcons and find that milesand copay is needed for the upgrade, too many explats in LA to compete with. My issue is that the coach fare these days for LAX-MIA is so low, my EQD per flight is low. Buying business class is $1500 -$2000 more per RT.
So I’ve become a free agent. Bought jet blue mint a couple times, better than any hard product AA has other than perhaps F in a 3class 77w, for $500 less (one way) out of FLL vs AA out of Miami.
If miles/copay is available in advance, you don’t need the ExPlat status. If you fly mostly out of NYC, do you still find AA convenient with all their route cutbacks?
I think the better phrasing is if you clear the upgrade, it’s free. I’m in such an elite heavy area that I’m often behind a couple of Concierge Keys even when I use miles/copay, which puts me ahead of explats using free upgrades. I’m batting around 50% it’s that approach, would be really low if relying on free upgrades. I get them in LAX-SFO, but not transcons.
I live in Philadelphia, so AA is the only real game in town. The metal sucks, but the routes are pretty good, and complimentary upgrades come through for me at EXP nearly all the time. Most of my SWUs come through as well, but usually not until the last minute. That is fine with me. I’m willing to fly coach to Europe if I have to, so don’t insist that the SWU be available at time of purchase. I still go up to JFK for some flights - transcon was paid business class at my old job and the planes out of JFK are much nicer - but PHL is so much easier.
I think I will be in the same boat, off by about $5K. For a while, we’d buy my ticket in business class at least one way with econ on the return, and use miles for my husband, in order to beef up my EQDs, but now it’s almost impossible to get saver mileage awards direct to Europe. I still find high enough value that I’d likely buy in for a few a few grand. If it’s a $5k hit…still not sure.
Upgrade lists are just stupidly long unless you are flying somewhere on the weekends.
George
Generally speaking, i wouldn’t invest my own money to bridge a gap to the highest status. Luckily (or unlikely given the amount of travel) I have Global Services at United. By far the biggest advantage of Global Services in terms of “perks” is the ability to use Global/Regional Upgrades on Award Travel. For example, you can use miles to get Economy Class awards, then use Global Upgrades to take them to business. At the level of Global Services the likelihood of upgrade is typically quite good.
This summer I’ll be taking my family to Italy (7 of us). I was able to afford to buy 7 Business Class legs and 7 Economy class legs. On those Economy legs, I used Global upgrades. If it all pans out, the “value” of those Economy upgrades to business are ~ $20k. In addition, a big part of why I could “afford” the 7 Biz Class seats in the first place is the 11x multiplier on $$ spent to GET to the miles I needed (vs 9x at Platinum, etc). In this particular scenario the VALUE of the highest tier might be worth investing in. But I’ll admit it IS a pretty specific set of needs
btw, side note. I missed the status I was targeting at the end of the year as well. They sent me several emails between 12/31 and 1/31 to buy up before my existing status expired 1/31. I let it lapse. I’ve since gotten at least 8-10 emails as recent as this week offering to still let me buy up even though I’m past the “dead line” so to speak. Seems like they’re more interested in me maintaining status ($$$$) than I am.
This is AA btw.
It depends on where your home airport is and where you are flying. As a former UA Global Services and AA Exec Plat (at the same time!), I find that many smaller airports/routes have gone to regional jets and the status is not longer worth it. Some newer regional jets have a nice selection of business class seats, but other than a bag of chips, they are not much better than exit row. Domestic upgrades (still free) from non-HUB cities are still pretty easy to get, but through hubs are hit or miss.
IF you are flying a lot internationally, then there may be some value but it’s no longer as lucrative as it once was. As GS on US, I still had to fork over $x00s to upgrade using Global Awards from Business to First for taxes, etc.
Sarah, I was in a similar boat as you a few years ago. A million mile + lifer on AA, I was one long round trip short of Exec Plat in mid December. I bought a cross country round trip (CA to NY) to get over the edge, and that seemed worth it to me. No complex calculation though. Why? Access to EXP phone support (which was excellent and immediate), free/frequent upgrades, access to better economy seats for free were at the top of the list for me. Access to lounges (especially International) was less of a big deal given my flying patterns.
These days I fly much less, but it does seem like the airlines have figured out how to charge incrementally for all the little treats I used to get for free. So if I really want some benefit, likely I can buy it fairly cheaply. But if I flew regularly I’d probably change my tune.
Don’t want to start a new thread, so dropping this here. Was perusing AA for mileage tickets and see they have “web economy special” fares for almost every flight, really low miles (sfo-jfk for 7k miles, for example). Has this been going for a while, or something new with the corona virus downturn?
Living close to IAH, AA is not my preferred carrier, so I don’t know the history of the “web special” fares. They do predate the COVID-19 downturn, though. We booked a Web Special award fare to St Kitts back in January. It was 10k miles each way, and a good redemption value as the flights were priced at over $1000 for the round trip. Unfortunately, the trip was scheduled for next month and has since been cancelled …
Edit … I just did a little searching on FlyerTalk and it looks like these “web specials” starting appearing in Oct 2018.