DrunkAndRetired.com Travel

I fly American Airlines for most of my travel. To be perfectly honest, the choice wasn’t logical at all. Just about two years ago I started working at RedMonk as an industry analyst. I’d been a programmer for about 10 years before that and never really traveled much at all, even for vacation. Being an analyst/consultant meant a sharp uptick in travel.

As first, I’d just choose any old airline, and then I realized I should pick one to start getting rewards and benefits. Why did I choose American? It was the adjustable head-rests that really made the final difference. Seriously, all of the airlines pretty much seemed the same, so I just picked American because they had fun head rests that you could bend up into a “T” shape to lean up against. I’d flown United, US Airways, Delta, and several other carriers.

After flying on American for awhile, I’m glad I accidently chose it. My only regret is that American, until very recently, didn’t partner with American Express on anything, so you I couldn’t sell myself on going through the trouble and expense to get an Amex card. (As you’ll find out, I have no money-rational reason for all these “loyalty programs”: I just have fun with them.)

AAdvantage

American’s frequent flier program is called AAdvantage. If all the history I’ve read is true, AAdvantage was the first frequent flier program and has been around for 25 years. I haven’t been in other programs, so I can’t really compare them first-hand.

In order to “be somebody” to American Airlines and start getting the benefits of frequent travel, you must be enrolled in AAdvantage. Another minor detail is that your AAdvantage account is only for one person, you. For example, you can’t enroll both yourself and your spouse under the same account, only one person can be linked to an account.

Enrolling

As with many loyalty programs, enrolling is easy. You just sign up.

You get an AAdvantage number right away, and they’ll send you a little card some week after. At first, you don’t really get anything for being enrolled. But, what this allows you to do is start accruing “miles” towards free flights and “status.”

Free Flights

Free flights are obvious and, with most programs, have some exceptions as well as requiring fees when you buy.

Unlike more recently airlines that simply give you “a flight” (like jetBlue and SouthWest[?]), the AAdvantage program gives you miles towards flights. Domestic (in the US) flights are 25,000 on average for a coach ticket, while international flights are 50,000. There’re many ways to pay less points, which we’ll go into in future posts.

Also, of course, there’s some black magic to when you can actually use the miles. That is, there are black-out dates, at least as far as I can tell (hopefully I’m wrong). That said, having used points a couple times for personal travel with my wife and I, I haven’t ever had problems getting the flight I wanted.

The annoying thing about redeeming these “free” flights is that you’ll end up paying “fees and taxes.” This is, really, pretty bogus, but what’re you gonna do? I recall paying between $90-100 each time my wife and I have gotten “free” tickets.

For a frequent traveler like myself, though, the free flights are really not the most important point of AAdvantage.

Status

More important to me than free flights is getting “elite status” with American. “Status” is an elevated “level of service” and benefits the airlines give you for flying a lot. At American, you get several things for status:

• Earlier checking-in - not really that big of a deal.
• Get on the plane earlier - I like this so I don’t have to scramble to find a place in the overhead compartment, while others (like my wife, Kim) think getting on the airplane sooner is insane: why spend more time on the plane?
• Better selection of seats - like exit-row and bulk-head seats.
• More “bonus miles” for travel, e.g., you can get 125% miles (and more) for each mile flown, meaning you get 25% additional, bonus miles.
• Upgrades to first class - you get “upgrade points” to spend on getting a first class seat when you’ve paid coach.
• Priority for stand-by - the higher your status, the more likely you are to get a stand-by seat (for when you’ve missed a flight and need to get on another one.
• Others - there are several other perks, like free drink coupons, discounted prices for the American airport lounge, the Admiral’s Club and getting a general higher level of niceness from American when the shit hits the fan.

There are 4 levels of status, the first of which is, really, nothing:

1. AAdvantage - this is just you being enrolled in the program.
2. Gold - after flying 25,000 miles, you achieve Gold status.
3. Platinum - after flying 50,000 miles, you get Platinum status.
4. Executive Platinum - after flying 100,000 miles, you get Executive Platinum status.

There are actually more ways than pure miles to get status. For the most part getting status is directly linked to actual miles flown, or “butts in seats” miles. That is, any “bonus” miles you get don’t count towards your status miles. This is kind of annoying, but once you figure out how quickly you can accrue bonus miles, it makes sense for American.

There are also “life-time” statuses you can get if you accure 1 million (Gold) and 2 million (Platinum) miles. These millions of miles can be any type of mile, but getting that many points will take a long time and/or a lot of spending.

More on all that in future posts, of course ;>

The Actual Travel

One of my RedMonk colleagues, Steve O’Grady is known for his travel horror stories. He particularly hates United. Every frequent traveler has shit happens while traveling. I’ve had to stay overnight in Cincinnati, paying for it myself due to weather (though meeting a fellow, rabid HST fan was an awesome benefit). I’ve missed flights on the way to client visits. I’ve lost luggage and been locked out of my house. I’ve even had my plane diverted from New York to Alabama when, in the words of the pilot, “the computer that tells us how far from the ground we are just went out.” And I’ve heard loud booms during take off that required us to go back to the airport and switch planes (but I got 10,000 bonus miles!)

The point is, shit will happen, and frequently. Being in AAdvantage program won’t really prevent shit from happening, but it might make it a little less stinky. Any service based company knows to value customers who spend more money more than customers who don’t, and that’s really the main thing you have to keep in mind about AAdvantage: they’re rewarding you for giving them more cash.

All that aside, I’ve found the actual travel aspect on American just fine. I’m actually not a nut for direct flights, so the fact that I have to go through DFW most of the time is just fine (besides, it’s more miles!). Since I have the minimum level of status, Gold, I can (so far) always get an exit row seat. And, as noted above, I’ve actually gotten several free flights for my wife and I.

More to Come

As this is the second post to this blog, there’s not a whole lot of detail in it. I wanted to give you a quick overview of being an American Airlines frequent flier.

In the future, I’ll write about the different ways of optimizing your AAdvantage account (read: getting more points, faster), tips for traveling on American, and traveling in general. My selfish hope is to get input from you, dear readers. Frequent flier and reward programs are large and complex enough that you can use all the eyes you can get to “optimize” them, so hopefully we’ll get more than just my eyes on it ;&gt’

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