Some former members of the coveted American Airlines Concierge Key ultra-elite status level were offer a new tiered challenge structure: Earn a total of one million Loyalty Points to regain Concierge Key status.
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**NOTE: Three weeks after publication of this post, American Airlines asked for a single correction to the article. Wi-Fi is not free for ConciergeKey members. That correction has been made.
What Is ConciergeKey?
American Airlines ConciergeKey is an exclusive status level that offers personalized service and VIP treatment to its members. It’s first public introduction was in the book then movie, Up In The Air, starring George Clooney. This invitation-only program is designed for American Airlines’ most valuable customers, who fly frequently and spend a significant amount of money with the airline. ConciergeKey members enjoy a range of exclusive benefits, including:
- Dedicated customer service: ConciergeKey members have access to a dedicated customer service team that is available 24/7 to assist with any travel needs or issues.
- Priority check-in and boarding: Members receive priority check-in and boarding, allowing them to skip the lines and board the plane first. That includes Flagship First Check-in at select airports as given to Executive Platinum members and oneworld Emerald status members.
- Upgrades and preferred seating: ConciergeKey members are given priority for upgrades and preferred seating on American Airlines flights.
- Complimentary Admirals Club Membership: Members have access to American Airlines’ Admirals Club lounges, as well as partner lounges around the world. Access to Flagship lounges where available is also permitted.
- Expedited security and customs clearance: Members can take advantage of expedited security and customs clearance at select airports.
- Complimentary Wi-Fi: ConciergeKey members receive complimentary Wi-Fi on American Airlines flights.
- Personalized travel planning: Members can work with their dedicated customer service team to plan and book their travel, including flights, hotels, and rental cars.
As ConciergeKey members would have already earned American Airlines Executive Platinum status, those benefits apply too.
Communication to Former Status Holders
Several groups online with Concierge Key members have reported receiving the same email from American Airlines. That email details a path (the first publicly disclosed for the elusive top-tier membership) to retain the ConciergeKey status. Each of the requirements increases in four-month segments.
- 250,000 Loyalty Points earned in the first four months
- 350,000 Loyalty Points earned in the second four-month segment
- 400,000 Loyalty Points earned in the third four-month segment
Loyalty Points earned through the year so far do not count toward progress on this challenge. According to these third-party reports, there is no hard requirement for earning any of those points through flying the carrier.
In the remarks I have seen, many have met this invitation (some via email, some via phone) with incredulity.
American Airlines Loyalty Has Lost Its Mind
Concierge Key grants a number of benefits that are exclusive, desirable, and worthy among the top in the business.
But a million points?
In prior years, ConciergeKey members had self-reported on various forums, achieving membership to the invite-only elite tier for as little as $30,000 in outstations with $60,000+ being an approximate metric for those in hub cities. Assuming all of those that received this challenge maintained Executive Platinum status and spent the same amounts listed before they wouldn’t come close to qualifying for this winback.
Forget flying which would take an inordinate number of expensive paid business class, and (where available) first-class flights – that clearly is not the aim. Outside of business owners that could put as much as $133,000/month (for the final quarter) on American Airlines credit cards, this challenge is next to impossible for any prior ConciergeKey members.
Outside of the absurd requirements and progressive spend up, American is vastly overvaluing ConciergeKey. Many lounges are better than even American’s Flagship lounges inside of Admirals Clubs. Still, those only exist in hubs, whereas American Express Centurion Lounges, for example, exist in many major cities and competing hubs as well. Additionally, these members would almost certainly hold a credit card, and at hundreds of thousands if not millions in charges, why wouldn’t they simply opt for the Citi American Airlines Executive credit card that includes an Admirals Club among other premium benefits?
Let’s assume the abhorrent eVIP (systemwide upgrade) clearance that mere mortal Executive Platinum members have to endure are instant upgrades for ConciergeKey members. Most of those upgrades wouldn’t really apply to ConciergeKey members under this scheme because they would have to book very expensive premium tickets anyway. Perhaps it’s more of a perk for travel companions, but most travelers that could achieve this are likely business travelers who won’t likely salivate over the ability to redeem for colleagues. And with a million points, even personal trips are covered based on the level of flying and spend required.
Gate-to-gate transfers at hubs in a Cadillac are no doubt irreplaceable by other benefits, but this level of spending would entitle the same treatment at other carriers for less.
A few years ago, we saw the first break from pure flying frequency and a revenue component added. That’s old news, but the full on migration to earning status outside of ANY flying has only arrived this year. That was thought to exclude ConciergeKey, but American is jumping in with two feet.
Conclusion
Even with every possible advantage the carrier could offer, it’s still American Airlines with the same shocking catering, questionable reliability, and boarding nonsense. In a time where other loyalty programs are not being bashful about failing to achieve elite levels, American seems to be doing the same while at the same time putting the requirements to full throttle. I can appreciate that American has enough pride in its ConciergeKey program to think it will be able to win back customers with this challenge, but for anyone who has flown the carrier, it’s an embarrassing amount of ill-placed hubris.
What do you think? Would you accept this challenge? Has American lost its collective mind?
incredulity Lol
Only a million LP just from card spend for CK? That seems super low to me considering how little citi reportedly pays AA per credit card point (less than a penny so only 10k usd revenue max for a million points).
Maybe AA wants to serve N members in CK and after reviewing last year’s membership, a 1M LP cutoff gets them that many.
It’s 250k for Exec Plat, so 4x that isn’t crazy.
Consider EXP was attainable with what $5k of flying back in the day, vs 5x that spend or more on flights needed for concierge key.
It is crazy low considering that in years past CK could be achieved with 60k usd AirPass. I have had for six years outside of AirPass and never spent more than 50k to get or keep it in any year.
In opposite thinking to this blog post (which Illustrates the dramatic increase in required spend to get CK through flying on this promotion – like 90k usd), for cc spend alone, they have dramatically lowered the bar on how much revenue needs to be delivered to aa to rate granting someone CK.
Yes the non flight spend component makes it much more accessible than prior. Same for EXP
It’s incredibly easy. My buddy got his CK end of March. He didn’t know about the qualifications but was putting all his biz spend on there. Although, my issue is that I hate putting CC spend on AA cards. Too bad Bask points don’t count. I’m holding about $6m in the high interest account (4.75%) rather than the mileage account until more commercial rates readjust and investors who overpaid years ago have to firesale.
I will likely just do the same, assuming they offer this in future years. I can put well over that 1 million on my personal citi card (I did that last year as well) if I don’t fly much one year to keep CK
It’s crazy what some of these people are doing for LP’s. Booking hotel rooms in Vegas and no showing to get the points, buying memberships to stuff they have no interest in for points, etc. it’s about buying the status as cheaply as possible.
Flying is a minor concern at this point in the AA Status game.
Putting aside the challenge for a second, let’s assume 1 million LPs is the current price of admission for CK. If you have a co-branded credit card, if you’re already EP, you’d need $77k in AA airfare spending ($77k x 11 from the airfare, plus $77k x 2 for the double points if you put it all on the co-branded card). Or $91k in airfare gets it if you charge it elsewhere. If you needed $60k of spending before living in a fortress hub, yes it’s an increase, but that hardly seems crazy. This doesn’t even include the LPs you earn from other non-flying activities. So I’d bet most people going for CK probably need about the same $60k in flying as before, plus or minus a little either way.
Now,, whether it’s actually worth spending that much money on AA’s lackluster product is a valid question, but if CK is what you want, it doesn’t seem materially more difficult than before.
What am I missing here?
FYI, those 2X AA purchases that you factored into your math don’t count towards LP’s. Same with Restaurants, Gas, Etc. Those are “Bonus Miles”. Still only earn 1 LP per dollar spent. Check your activity and you’ll see.
“Concierge Key grants a number of benefits that are exclusive, desirable, and worthy among the top in the business.
But a million points?”
Remember that folks who did 4mm with SimplyMiles did not receive CK, while those > 5MM did.
I’d consider a published commitment of CK after 1MM Loyalty Points a no-brainer. I’d go for it to get CK back in a heartbeat. The ability to book onto sold out flights during irrops + Flagship check-in and Flagship lounges flying domestic + personalized assistance in-person (and often via text) during travel + res via dedicated agents over email + actually clearing upgrades? Definitely.
AA is listening to the wrong people and the wrong data. Even increasing the ExecPlat Loyalty Rewards threshold this last year was a BAD call. Yes, alot of people (especially in NYC/LA) qualified this previous year. BUT, that was with 15+ months and 2 Christmases of spending. IMHO they should have waited until 2025 to see if the ranks were still swelling up top. I’m a Loyal AA EP that earned 350k plus LP’s last year. 2-3 months in and I’m not even at 10% of that yet. Going to be a SLOG to even re-qualify, much less earn Amy of the “Loyalty Rewards” ….
The Bento Bag article has no place to put comments, so I’m putting my comment here as well as a tie in. I chuckled at this line regarding a $300 non-designer handbag “For some, it will seem expensive, but readers of this blog will know that we use our bags for a long, long time and this one feels like it will last for decades.”
Practicality is secondary to status seekers/fliers. A woman justified this to me with her Louis Vuitton handbag: “I’ll own this for 30 years so it’s affordable.” This is BS. I have plenty of inexpensive bags that I’ve used for decades with little wear. And expensive handbag owners tend to swap them out in a decade at most because they want to appear in style. Not only that, but things happen even to the best well made bags. Who puts Louis Vuitton suitcases into general baggage check-in thinking it will survive the Samsonite Gorillas more than a few years? I read that baggage handlers even abuse luxury brand bags MORE than regular ones!
So how does this tie into the present discussion? In marketing, elite is associated with high prices even being a selling point. Luxottica revitalized the Ray Ban brand by taking them out of gas stations, improving the quality (a little bit), and then jacking up the price by 10X. Studio 54 made millions by deliberately making their club HARDER to get into with long lines. CK has been featured on a Hollywood film by a handsome A-list actor so why NOT make it expensive to join the “club” for the status someone will have showing it off to a Vera Farmiga lookalike in a hotel bar?
The kind of guys with travel expense accounts in that range will not care much about the higher challenges, I guess, but as others point out, why would one with those resources want a product such as AA when there’s far better airlines to fly on in that class?
I think for the CK discussion, you have to remove the AA domestic experience from the equation because the vast majority of CKs are earning their status on long haul J. Is AA bad? I’d say they’re on par with United and better than Delta. Any AA J seat is better than old Club World on BA. T3 is also a superior experience at LHR. JFKs new lounge game is very strong. AA also lets elites confirm same day changes on JFK-LHR. Nobody else does that.
LH J is not better than AA. AF/KL ‘might’ have a marginally better soft product, but for frequent biz travelers, they care about sleeping. AA wins there.
AA is the best carrier to Latin America in terms of quality and frequency of service. SWUs to F are easy to use on GRU and EZE. Flagship first dining in MIA is amazing.
Admittedly AA is inferior on non-China Asia routes, and that could be a differentiator for passengers traveling to Asia frequently.
AA is boring and comfortable, and I think that’s exactly what CKs want.
I wonder if the AA lawyers have raised a concern with potentially discriminatory treatment of the kind that forced the Admirals Club (and the Ambassadors Club/Red Carpet Club/Clipper Club) to move to paid memberships.
By setting a crazy high threshold that was *theoretically* reachable, they could state with a semi-straight face that there was an objective path to earning the status.
It is embarrassing that AA is switching from rewarding the high frequent travelers with point collectors. CK has its purpose and using CK to attract new customer, in my opinion in not the way to go. Why not create a program just for those low frequent travelers that want to me treated like mega VIP’s. They will be willing to pay for an exclusive membership, but allow CK to served its purpose. After 8 years as a CK, this year I was not renew. Amazingly, every year traveling the same or more, even during covid and overnight I am not good enough to be reinvited. The excuse by AA is that they want to limit the amount of participants. But the reality is that they are giving priority to point collectors, which some of them that I am met on flights travel less than 40 hours per year, but accumulate massive amounts of points. If Loyalty means accumulation of company expenses via usage of credit card vs. rewarding your frequent travelers, which most likely represent 80% of revenue to AA, good luck.
As an emerald level, you can enter any business and first class lounge under BA, Qatar, Qantas just to mentioned some of the benefits. In the United States, as an Exp Platinum you have 0 benefits to enter any lounge. AA is all about them. I decided to give my loyalty to other airlines that truly appreciate your business and fulfill my business needs.