American Airlines is adding two additional lifetime thresholds to its AAdvantage Million Miler program, making what has been an uncompetitive program more competitive, even as it still lags such benefits on United Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
American Airlines Adds Two New Tiers To Million Miler Program
As I see it, the Million Miler programs at American, Delta, and United are the last thing that truly awards long-term loyalty instead of loyalty on a transactional basis. Lifetime miles earned, a least today, are based on so-called “butt in seat” miles (miles actually flown) versus miles accrued. That means you need to fly a million miles in order to qualify for Million Mile status.
It wasn’t always this way…and this is why I suspect American Airlines has dragged its feet so long on making its Million Mile program more competitive. I’ll discuss that further below, but let’s first look a the program changes announced this week.
Effective March 1, 2025, AA will add two additional Million Miles tiers:
- Lifetime AAdvantage Gold status – one million miles
- Platinum status – two million miles
- Platinum Pro – four million miles (new tier)
- Executive Platinum – five million miles (new tier)
Why The Program Still Lags Delta And United
Let’s be clear: this is still not competitive with either Delta or United. As a reminder, United offers lifetime status to you and a companion at these thresholds:
- lifetime MileagePlus Gold status – one million miles
- Platinum – two million miles
- Premier 1K – three million miles
- Global Services – four million miles
The companion status carries over for whatever status you have earned, not just your Million Mile status (so if you are like me and have 1K status and are also a Million Miler, my companion shares my 1K status).
Delta’s program is not as generous, but it has recently improved its own SkyMiles Million Mile lifetime program:
- lifetime SkyMiles Gold status – one million miles
- Platinum status – two million miles
- Diamond status – three million miles
- Delta 360 status – five million miles
But it’s not surprising why American Airlines’ program is not as generous: it counted all AAdvantage miles earned toward Million Mile status until 2011. So a person who never flew AA but put millions of dollars of spending on AA co-branded credit card earned Million Mile status…and now stands to gain up to lifetime Executive Platinum status.
It isn’t clear how many AAdvantage members this change will impact.
CONCLUSION
American Airlines has nicely improved its AAdvntage Million Mile program with a four million and five million mile threshold.
Yes, the program is not as generous as Delta or United, but it is now a lot more generous than before…and that is something to celebrate. I am quite pleased not because I will ever come close to achieving such lifetime milestones on American Airlines, but because every time a carrier improves its Million Mile program, it makes it less likely others will devalue it.
Will you be positively impacted by the change to AA’s Million Miler program?
image: American Airlines
I also remember for a brief period during Covid credit card spend on American (maybe just Barclays?) counted toward MM status as well.
Overall I doubt it’s going to have much of an impact at the ExP level compared to the current levels based on CC spend and people earning it by recycling Meal Services, no stay hotel visits in Cambodia and such to gimmick the system.
@Dave … “no stay hotel visits in Cambodia” …
… is likely safer than actual hotel visits in Cambodia , the home of many infectious diseases and worse .
I got 1MM miles with AA 20 years ago. It gave me lifetime Gold which in my case is useless. I have probably be in a AA ace twice since I got that status.
@Santastico … “lifetime gold” is merely a useless marketing trinket . They have one goal : “get their money” .
I passed 1MM with AA last Wednesday, so the timing of all these posts has been coincidental for me. I really hoped when AA redid the program, they’d follow DL’s recent change and give 1MM Platinum. I understand, at least conceptually, why they don’t, but I didn’t start flying AA until 2017, so I never benefitted from the historic credit card spend. It would nice if they had a two-tiered system that could reward it solely based on miles flown… Maybe one day.
1MM since 2017? Nicely done!
I’m languishing at 1.5MM on UA….going to take me years and years to reach 2MM.
I’ve had MM with AA since 2009. Through both changes in my travel patterns (like moving to a UA hub) and AA’s generally garbage product, I might hit 2MM before 2050. Might.
And I’m absolutely one of the reasons AA’s policy has been so conservative. A significant number of my “AA miles” were earned on Qantas. And more than half the rest of them are merger miles from HP, US, TW, OC and other airlines swallowed up on the way to today’s AA. Hell, I’ve even got UA miles credited to US in that AA MM pool.
I will say this is welcome news to me. After 20+ years at AA’s highest level(s) (Platinum, then EP and CK) until retiring more than 10 years ago I reverted to Platinum which is nothing like it was when it was the highest level, for my retirement travel.
It is welcome news for someone with 6MM lifetime on AA that I will now at least have a chance for an upgrade when traveling for pleasure now in our golden years (mid 60’s).
Thank you AA for stepping up
Congrats, Paul!