My running assumption has been that Dividend Miles and AAdvantage — and indeed US Airways and American — would combine either the last weekend of February or the first weekend of March 2015.

It will have been about 15 months since the merger was consummated (and there was plenty of preparatory work done in the time leading up to that, especially as the question of the merger dragged on due to the Department of Justice’s anti-trust lawsuit).

And it’s a relatively slow time for travel. It’s the window that United-Continental, Northwest-Delta, and America West-US Airways used.

But the tasks of combining airlines are gargantuan. The America West-US Airways combination was initially an operational disaster (I’m strange enough to have consciously opted to fly US Airways that weekend — everyone was told to check in online, but the website didn’t work and neither did the kiosks).

So they haven’t committed to a timeframe. They could certainly do it 11 months from now, but they’re waiting to make a decision to see the progress they’ve made.

This has several implications:

• The longer they take, the more they will align AAdvantage and Dividend Miles before the combination actually occurs.
  
• The chances are increased that they’ll allow members to move miles back and forth and obtain reciprocal status in the programs as an interim members.
  
• We don’t know whether elite qualifying miles in Dividend Miles and AAdvantage will be combined.

When I spoke with AAdvantage President Suzanne Rubin last week I asked about the elite qualifying miles issue.

It’s been reported that American and US Airways elite qualifying miles from a given year would be combined towards status in the following year when the programs are combined.

And it’s been reported that this would not happen as well.

Both positions have been attributed either to American statements or to American or US Airways website claims.

In fact, nothing has been decided and Suzanne suggested that it will will ultimately depend on when the progams combine.

She then explained that they would probably need to combine elite qualifying balances if the programs themselves were combined during a program year (eg combined in March or September) but not necessarily if there was a clean break into a new program on, say, January 1.

Personally if I were running the programs I would combine them either way, but that doesn’t seem to be how they’re thinking about things. And more importantly this answer suggests that they haven’t decided what they’re going to do yet, it’s one of the many open questions as the programs gradually align and prepare to combine.

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