A couple of weeks ago I reminded that American’s lifetime elite status recognition program was changing — going from counting all miles earned in the program to counting only flight miles (except that folks who get the pricey Citi Executive Mastercard before December 1 would have spend from that card count towards lifetime status for at least a year).
I said at the time that I expected to end the month with 2,998,000 lifetime miles in the AAdvantage program. I had earned lifetime Gold at one million miles in 2006, lifetime Platinum at two million miles in 2010, and a bit over a year and a half later was on the cusp of 3 million lifetime miles which only means 4 additional confirmed systemwide upgrades valid from any fare… plus the distinction of course of being a 3 million rather than two million miler 🙂
That guess meant that I would pass the 3 million mark either on my flight to Dallas for the start of the oneworld Mega DO in January or on the oneworld Megao DO charter itself. And waiting until next year would mean that those systemwide upgrades would be valid a year longer than if I had crossed the threshold in 2011.
Instead, though, I decided to just be done with it and popped a few Starpoints into my account, which posted overnight. Since I just received my registration for the Executive Platinum challenge as part of the oneworld Mega DO, where I only have to fly 20,000 miles on American by mid-January in order to qualify, I have the potential for plenty more confirmed upgrades in my future. I wasn’t too worried about the expiration date on these upgrades.
Honestly, I’m just sharing my happiness at the lifetime achievement, though I sure wish that 3 million came with a bump in status over 2 million. Alas…
Gary, 3 has a nicer ring than 2! So congratulations from someone just starting out on AAdvantage (me!) with the MegaDo 😉
Congratulations on a tremendous milestone.
Ahhh….the dream of lifetime exp. With UA now publishing lifetime GS, maybe someday AA fans can hope?
Congrats! I just hit the 1MM mark today – just in the nick of time 🙂
Congratulations. A milestone worthy of a celebratory post!
Congratulations! Looking forward to when you get to 4 million miles!
@Million Mile Secrets — but that’s now going to require actually FLYING American. But if I do this status challenge thing perhaps I’ll get there someday..
I forgot you earned the miles by credit card spend, not by flying!
@Million Mile Secrets I’ve never given oneworld much flying, I may have to start!
Gary,
Do you have a breakdown of how your earned them? I thought you said you hadn’t been churning cards for a while. Looks like you earned 1 million in the last 1.5 years.
PS. My wife and I both hit 1 million recently. Probably 75% was do to credit card bonuses.
Hi Gary,
Congratulations!
Just crossed the chasm of 1MM yesterday! Pretty happy too 😉
I agree that 3 MM should be enough to get anyone LTEXP. Maybe under the new circumnstances AA will change that to lure fidelity.
Back in 97 my former boss had already reached 2.5MM. Don’t know what the perks were back then, but he did receive a personally signed letter from the then president of AA and a pretty cool acrilic paper weight after reaching each million mark.
Pitty AA does not do that anymore.
Do you have any guess as to how many 1MM, 2MM, etc. are out there?
@Jim Newhouse credit cards, credit card spend, BankDirect, online shopping, various bonuses….
@Mark I don’t know breakdown of # of 1MM, 2MM, 3MM etc. I suspect there are quite a lot of 1MMs especially which had to be a driver of the changes AA is making..