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On American, getting “status” means that you’ll get special treatment from the airlines. You’ll be able to pick better seats when booking (exit row, for example), get more bonus miles towards free flights, be able to board earlier, get discounts on the Admiral’s Club, be favored when you’re waiting for stand-by, and get several other “deals” and types of improved customer service.

If you’re going to travel a lot on American, your goal is to get at least Gold status. Traveling with status on an airline is much, much better than traveling with no status. Then again, if you get your rocks off on deal-hunting (paying $50 less cause you searched around on kayak.com), like getting direct flights all the time, and otherwise aren’t willing to put up with flying the same airline all the time, then status is no big deal for you.

I’ll write up all the benefits in a future post. For now, let’s focus on how you get status.

Enrolling

You must enroll in AAdvantage to start working towards elite status. Once you enroll, just make sure to use AA.com to book your flights (getting 1,000 bonus miles for round-trip flights) or add in your AAdvantage number when booking through other sites. As we’ll go over in futures posts, there are many other places you can give your AAdvantage number and earn bonus miles.

Enrolling is really easy, so just go ahead and do it. Not only will you start accuring miles for free tickets and status, but you’ll get another flimsy card to stick somewhere!

Status Levels: Gold, Platinum, Executive Platinum

The AAdvantage program has 3 status levels beyond simply being enrolled: Gold, Platinum, and Executive Platinum. To get to each level, you must gain “real” miles by flying. That is, any bonus miles you get through your AA credit card or any other source other than actually flying do not count. Also, miles flown on “free” tickets you’ve bought with miles don’t count either.

There are three main ways to qualify for each level: through miles flown, segments, or “points.”

• Miles flown are the actual miles you fly in the airplane. For example, Austin to Dallas is 186 miles.
• Segments are each city-to-city leg of your flight. For example, if you’re flying Austin to Dallas/Ft. Worth to New York, that’s 2 segments.
• Points are sort of the same as miles, but calculated, put roughly, on how much you spend on each ticket and the class of the ticket. American sells several “classes” of tickets, indicated by a letter. First Class is A, F, and P; Business Class is D, I, J; “Full Fare Economy Class” is B, Y; etc. The upper three classes of tickets get 1.5 points per mile vs. the normal rate of 1.0 points. “Deep Discount” classes get 0.5 points. What’s this mean for you? Not much as you’ll probably be flying “Discount Economy Class” most of the time. But, if you fly First of Business class, it means you’ll get to elite status faster.

Qualifying for Status

The table below shows you the current miles, segments, and points you need for each segment (see the official page to make sure):

As you can see, the number of points needed for each level doubles.

Qualifying Period & Membership Period

This is where things get sucky and (to me) slightly confusing. American doesn’t let you just build up miles, year after year. Instead, each year you have a window where you can qualify for status. The qualifying year the regular calendar year, January 1st to December 31st. Once you reach the thresholds above, you get status and will have it for the rest of the calendar year, through the next “membership year” which is, more or less, the next calendar year (it’s March thru February of the next year). That is, once you achieve status, you get it for all of the current year, plus the next year, plus January and February of the next year. As the AA page says:

For example, if you earn 25,000 elite-qualifying points or miles on July 31, 2007 your AAdvantage Gold membership will continue through February 28, 2009.

You have to re-qualify for status, it’s not permeant. Worse, if you don’t actually achieve status by March 1st, all of your counters get reset to zero: miles, segments, and points. That is, American doesn’t let you just sit there accruing points year after year: you have to get the above miles, segments, or points within the calendar year to qualify for elite status.

American has a concise, if somewhat opaque explanation of this all this. In my head, I’ve summarized it as: I need to fly at least 25,000 miles or 30 segments each year to get Gold status.

Other Airlines

Through partnerships, you can earn miles towards status on other airlines. As of this writing, those are lines are: AmericanAirlines Eagle, AmericanConnection, Alaska Airlines, British Airways (set to expire March, 2008), Cathay Pacific, Finair, Iberia, JAL, LAN, MALEV, Quantas, and Royal Jordanian.

This is, more or less, all of the airlines in flyertalk wiki and flyertalk forums.

Strategies for Getting Status

What are some strategies, then, for earning status? Really, there’s only one: fly more. That means flying not only more often, but flying with more connections in your flights. If you love direct flights, sucks for you. I fly out of Austin, which means I typically have to fly through DFW as there aren’t that many direct flights to my common destinations (SFO and JFK).

The important thing to remember is that only actual miles flown count. Also, of course, you want to keep your eye on how close you are to achieving status. According to the Flyer Guide wiki, there’s an unofficial “wiggle room” for just barely making it to each level if you call up: if you’re 500 miles short of Gold, or a 1,000 miles short of Platinum and Executive Platinum.

Lifetime Status

Currently and “subject to change” as everyone will warn you, you can get lifetime Gold and Platinum status if you get 1 million or 2 million miles. The deal here is that those miles are any miles, not just miles flown. This is still going to take you a long, long time, but at least it’s a fun goal to shoot for. More importantly, since there’s a gazillion little ways to get miles, it gives you a reason to pursue a mile here and a mile there.

Obviously, I haven’t reached lifetime status nor anywhere near it.

Other References

Here are some more references for gaining elite status with American Airlines:

• Instant Enrollment in AAdvantage - again, you have to enroll to start getting benefits.
• FlyerGuide.com Wiki: enrolling and qualifying for elite status. This wiki is one of the most compherensive and up-to-date resources out there. It’s much better than AA’s own information, if unofficial.
• Official American Airlines Elite Status Pages - including qualification requirements, membership period, and other airlines you can earn miles towards status on.
• FlyerTalk American AAdvantage Forums - these are forums, so not as easy to navigate as the above. Nonetheless, there’s plenty of helpful information on elite status.

Once You’ve Got It

Once you get status, you’ll get a card in the mail. You should be able to start getting the benefits of status right away, but you might have to pester American at first. When I first got Gold status, I was able to use some of the benefits (checking in at the first class desk instead of the regular, coach desk), but because my ticket didn’t have my fresh Gold status printed on it, I wasn’t able to board with group 1.

Tiny hiccups like that aside, once you have status, you can start using the benefits, which I’ll go over in future posts.

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