Last week, I wrote about getting elite status. That’s sort of cart-before-the-horse, but you can never start trying to get elite status soon enough ;>
Here, I’ll write up the benefits of having elite status on American Airlines. Just to re-cap there are three levels of elite status: Gold, Platinum, and Executive Platinum. If you want a quick reference, check out the FlyerGuide wiki: it’s got a side-by-side table of statuses.
Overall
As a summary briefly, status gets you several main benefits, detailed in the rest of this post:
- Better seat selection - get exit rows seats all the time!
- Check in at the first or business class desk, avoiding long check-in lines.
- Use priority security lines, if available, to get through security faster.
- Board the plane earlier, if not first.
- Higher chance of getting on the stand-by flight you want.
- More bonus miles for each flight, on American and some other carriers.
- Discounts on Admiral’s Club.
No Limits on Bonus Miles from Citi AAdvantage Credit Card
Also, if you’re using the Citi AAdvantage credit card, once you get status there’s no limit on the number of bonus miles you can get through the credit card. Without status, you’re limited to 100,000 miles a year. With status, there’s no limits. See the fine print for the credit card
This only applies to the Platinum card, as far as I can tell.
Gold - The Base Level of Benefits
Gold is the first level of status you get after flying 25,000 miles, getting 30 segments, or 25,000 “points.” Also, see the official Gold Guide from American.
The benefits on status levels are sort of “cumulative” in that higher levels have the benefits of lower levels, but usually have them “better.”
Once you get Gold status your tickets will be watermarked with your status and you’ll get a plastic, Gold card in the mail (see above).
But it’s not all trinkets: you get a bag of new “powers,” discounts, and other benefits.
Better seat selection
Once you hit Gold, you’ll be able to pick exit row seats (most) every time instead of having to luck out to get one.
Traveling in exit row seats is really just a-OK. I screwed up and had to travel in a “normal” seat recently and it was just terrible. With the exit row seats you can actually stretch your legs out and your knees don’t jam up against the seat in front of you. There are some trick exit row seats — they don’t recline of they’re not really exit row seats (how I caught caught last) — but if you check the SeatGuru, you’ll be fine.
If I’m traveling alone I like 20D on the MD-80s, which I find myself on the most. Otherwise, when traveling with Kim, I don’t mind giving up a reclining seat and sitting in 20E/20F or 21E/20f.
Check-in at the first or business class desk
If you’ve got bags to check, you can skip the usually longer lines for those without status. If there’s a business class desk, you have to check in there, but if you’re flying domestically, there’s usually just first class desk, where you can go instead.
The first time I used this was great: I was had a box of t-shirts to check at SFO, and I could skip a line of 10-15 people for a line of about 2.
Use Priority Security Lines
While these aren’t available at all airports, many larger airports have these security lines set aside for first class and status’ed flyers. As you can imagine, they’re often much faster.
Check out the list or airports with priority security lines on the wiki.
Board the plane earlier
With Gold status, you’ll always be in Group 1 to board. American has 7 groups (first class & the Platinums , then groups 1-6) when it comes to boarding.
If you’re like my wife, Kim, you’re probably wonder why the hell you’d want to get on the plane earlier. There’s two reasons:
- Reduce the time it takes to punch your ticket, wait in the Jetway, wait in the plane row, and then finally sit down.
- Make sure you get an overhead bin next to your seat, not behind it.
The second is the real reason it’s nice: if you’re traveling with two carry-ons, you have to put at least one in the overhead bin. It’s easy — trust me — to get trapped and have to put your carry-on in an overhead behind your seats. This means it’ll take longer to get off the airplane, and you have to be that annoying ass who’s walking backwards, against everyone on the plane. Of course, if you’re in first class I think you can get a drink once you sit down.
Upgrades
Once you get Gold status, you can try to get upgraded to first class. I find the American upgrade system confusing: there’s too many if’s-and’s-or-but’s for me, but whatever.
From what I can tell, you’re given upgrade points (or “stickers”) and you can use them to apply for an upgrade on most any flight. You get 4 upgrades when you hit Gold, and then earn 4 for every 10,000 miles you earn afterwards.
You’ll be notified 24 hours before the flight (depending on your status) if you’ve gotten the upgrade or not. Once upgraded, you fly in first class. Upgrades are such a spaghetti topic that I’ll be doing a post just on that in the near future, perhaps once I figure it out and actually use it.
Milage Bonus
At Gold, you’ll get a 25% milage bonus. So, if you fly 1,000 miles, you’ll 250 extra bonus miles. These are bonus miles, so they of course don’t count towards further status.
Stand-by Priority
If you have to go stand-by on a plane — usually as the result of missing a fight due to weather or wanting to switch flights — you’ll get a higher priority in the queue than non-status folks. The gate agents can ultimately jigger the priority however they want, but having Gold status and above helps out.
For example, due to weather (or whatever) last winter I missed a flight home by about 10 minutes. This was one of the ice days at DFW. On a list of about 40 people waiting to get on a flight to Austin, I was #14, but quickly moved up to #6 and eventually got on the flight.
Gold Phone Line
You also get a special, Gold phone number you can call. Honestly, I have no idea if this is really anything meaningful.
Admirals Club Discount
Gold status gets you $50 off the price of an Admirals club membership. There’s also a discount if you want to buy lounge membership with miles instead of dollars: 55,000 instead of 70,000 miles.
Bonus Deals
At Gold, there’s a crap-load of bonus deals with hotels, rental cars, and other things. From what I can tell, you get upgraded to elite dining status in the Hotel and Dining Rewards Program (meaning you earn 10 miles per every dollar spent at qualifying restaurants). The miles-bountiful FTD offer picks up 200 more bonus miles.
Platinum
Once you fly 50,000 miles, get 60 segments, or 50,000 points, you hit Platinum. Check out the official guide from American. I haven’t achieved Platinum status yet, so all of this is on what I read and hear. Platinum status gets you all of the above, except better:
- Better seat selection - could there be even better seat selection than Gold gets? Perhaps so.
- Check in at the first class desk - instead of checking in at business or first class if business isn’t available, you can check in at first class all the time.
- Board the plan even earlier - Platinum boards right after first class, and often with them. Again, this really just matters for frequent travelers who want to make sure they get a good overhead bin.
- Upgrades - there’s a better chance you’ll get upgraded, and you’re notified of upgrade success 72 hours ahead of time.
- Milage bonus - you’ll get 100% bonus miles, that is double. So, if you fly 1,000 miles, you’ll get 1,000 bonus miles. Yow!
- Platinum phone line - as with Gold, you get a special phone line. Who knows how much this really matter.
- Admiral’s Club Discount - you get $100 off, or just 50,000 miles.
Executive Platinum
Finally, if you fly 100,000 miles, 100 segments, or get 100,000 points, you’re Executive Platinum. Here’s the official guide: note that they even went nutty and did a new design for this one.
Unlike Gold and Platinum, there are some exclusive benefits here. And why not? You probably travel all the time and have long forgot the name of your significant other at this point ;>
First, the “betters” from previous levels:
- Upgrades - instead of having to spend upgrade stickers, you can just request a “complimentary” one, and one for your “companion” (flying on expensive tickets) up to 100 hours before the flight.
- Phone line - hey, it’s another special phone line! You’d hope the phone line for Executive Platinum would be nice and cushy, but who knows?
- Admirals Club - more discounts on for the Admiral’s Club: $300 or 45,000 miles.
Additionally, you get some Execute Platinum only features:
- VIP upgrades - once you qualify, you get 8 “system wide upgrades” which allow you to upgrade yourself or others to upgrade (up to 3 segments the wiki page says). That is, you can upgrade 4 round-trip tickets to first or business class.
- No more fees for “free” travel - you actually have to pay several fees when redeeming miles for “free” tickets. At Executive Platinum, if you book 21 days in advance, there are no fees. I presume there are still taxes.
- More MileSAAver seats available - when booking “free” flights, access to better seats. I don’t really know what this is as I haven’t used it.
- Guaranteed Seats on Sold-out flights - if you need to get on a sold-out flight, American says they’ll get you a seat if you call them 24 hours ahead of time. No doubt, the price is going to suck, but you’re probably wearing big enough britches that it don’t matter.
- Luggage Tags - American sends you two “free” luggage tags with your name and status on them. Apparently, American used to send luggage tags for all status levels, but now only does for Platinum. Yeah, this is clearly the most exciting benefit ;>
Complaints
Having had Gold status for just a little while now, there are few annoyances:
- Lounge access - obviously, I’d like more hand-outs, who doesn’t like free shit? It’d be nice to get lounge access, or, at least, get it much cheaper. Free drinks maybe? Free WiFi access?
- Companion status - I recently traveled with Kim who, not being a traveler, has no status. While American matched status for seat selection, they didn’t match it for boarding: I was in group 1 as usual, while Kim was in group 4. It didn’t matter as we only had one carry one, but it seemed kind of silly not to match Kim with status. What would have happened if we had to go on stand-by re: priority by status?
- Bonus offers - the bonus offers with partners look like they’re the same for all the elite levels. I don’t really care, but there’s a bit of deception by wording going on in that American doesn’t tell you that Gold’s bonus offers are the same as Executive Platinum.
Well Worth It
Petty complaints aside, it’s obviously well worth it to get status. For me, the expanded seat selection is great, and the priority check-in and lines are fantastic when I need them and when available.
As Tim of The Front Side says in an upcoming DrunkAndRetired.com Travel podcast, once you have status going to airport can actually be fun instead of a drag. Granted, not, you know, fun like going out for drinks with friends, but much better than you’re probably used to.
(Special thanks to Chip for tracking down “Jetway.”)
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