I think a second round of congratulations are in order. Not only has American Airlines inaugurated a new class of ConciergeKey members, but these are the same people that so richly benefited by donating to charity in exchange for massive amounts of AAdvantage frequent flyer miles last year.
Those Who Scored Big With Cheap Miles Last December Now Enjoying Invite-Only ConciergeKey Status On American Airlines
Remember the SimplyMiles promotion from last December? By donating to worthy causes, many received up to 240 miles per dollar. Some, including friends like Gary from View From The Wing and Ben from One Mile At A Time, went all-in and earned millions of miles through this promotion.
Now, they and others are sitting on millions of American Airlines miles, reducing the effective price of just about anything to pennies on the dollar.
But wait, there’s more! This week, American Airlines has made many of those same beneficiaries of cheap miles part of the invite-only ConciergeKey (often misspelled Concierge Key) level of the AAdvantage program, historically reserved for high spenders…on flights as well as corporate travel influencers. It appears that non-flight spending, when massive, may count.
For example, Gary bought 7 million miles, which (and we are only guessing) American Airlines seems to have mapped to about $70,000 in spending (though of course Gary bought the points for closer to $30,000).
Benefits to ConciergeKey include two extra systemwide upgrades, no co-pays when using miles to upgrade (a huge benefit), and of course priority status on all waitlists. ConciergeKey members are also more likely to receive car transfers at major hubs between flights.
Am I envious about this? Well, I try to be envious of nothing, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say this was a struggle. So not only did I miss out on the deal of a lifetime on purchased points but also the chance to enjoy invite-only status on American Airlines?
But it doesn’t hurt me nearly as much as those who spend $10-20K per year on AA tickets, have for decades, and now find themselves trumped by folks who profited off what may have been akin to a mistake fare (at least in terms of the cost-benefit analysis). One reader I spoke to is taking the drastic step of redirecting spending from American Airlines due to this issue.
I still take this approach to such situations and do not find it constructive to dwell on issues of fairness. So I’m just going to say congratulations to those who got it and enjoy the status.
CONCLUSION
What another great week it has been for those who gambled and bought miles cheaply last December. Not only are they enjoying those miles, but now they will enjoy seven months of ConciergeKey status from American Airlines. Let this all be a lesson to us: seize the moment when it arrives.
In lieu of you not doing it, Let me say what a complete gut punch, douche thing on AA’s part. I have been Exec Plat for decades, spent as much as $40+K a year during some heavy travel years, have over 3M miles, and have reached out to them on a few occasions to see what more I need to do….crickets. This is one of the most insulting and deeply disturbing things I have ever seen AA do. And I have been around the game awhile.
The irony is also not lost on the fact that they awarded this to the man who originated just last week the whole, “AA is Going Bankrupt” fracas. I am so happy I switched to UA this year. Best decision I ever made so as to avoid that train wreck of an airline that I gave loyalty to for over 20 years, all for nothing.
Sorry to hear that. A lot of airline companies haven’t been paying attention to people who’ve been loyal to them. Like KE got rid of their lifetime members (Morning Calm Premium and Million Miler)- folks who’ve been loyally flying them for 15+ years in the pretense of covid and the Asiana merger back in 2020. It’s just how it is for a lot of places, unfortunately.
Agree 100% Stuart, it’s a gut punch to us loyal AA flyers. I’m not quite at your level but I’m EXP and definitely spend over $20k a year on flights between my wife and myself. Very discouraging.
Next do forgiven PP loans. Money given to jerks that didn’t deserve it or need it only because our congress is captured/ corrupted by special interests. And people love to blame BLM. The corruption that white collar whites have going in this country, most of them would have guillotined in the french revolution right after capture.
And while there might not be a french revolution with guillotine in the US anytime soon, my previous recommendation still stands. Castrate anyone with more than 2 kids. A loser living on government dole shouldn’t be popping out more than 2 kids.
@Matthew can we get this clown out of here? This guy just spews racism, hate, and a lotta negative energy. This is a travel website, not some place to spew this stuff.
If they won’t ban the openly racist bigot Amy Fischer, then no one will get the treatment.
@ Matthew — The CK status is only good for 7 months, not “a year”. Makes a HUGE difference from a planning perspective.
Well, 8 months 🙂
Yeah, that. 🙂
How many points does it take this year to qualify for CK?
How many points does it take this year to qualify for CK?
For some reason the site thinks i already asked this question (but i didnt).
AA is going the same direction of Delta by gifting people with top status. Delta has been rolling over MQMs during the pandemic and now almost everyone I know is a Diamond Medallion which makes the top status with Delta worthless. As a Diamond Medallion for over 10 years (earned and not given) that makes me feel stupid since I am now always #30 or worst on the upgrade list.
Interesting, I know plenty of folks with lots of rollover MQMs but few with the MQD necessary for Diamond.
@Delta waived MQD during the pandemic. All MQMs you earned in 2020 and 2021 no matter how were rolled over into 2022 and kept your status intact. I qualified for Diamond for 2020 but barely flew that year and still kept my Diamond status for 2021. Same happened again in 2021 although I earned it with MQDs it was all rolled into 2022. Now, to requalify for 2023 you only need the MQDs as you have 3 years of MQMs on your account. Nice gesture but crazy since they exploded the number of Diamond Medallions that would probably never qualify by MQDs. Anyway, I will requalify for 2023 and since MQDs won’t roll over I think things will get better in 2023.
Are you exaggerating a bit, or do you just live in a hub airport? I am 50% upgrade rate as Platinum Medallion. And even with the MQM rollover, Diamond is still hard to do with $15k MQD or $250k Amex Waiver.
Maybe you mean the actual status rollover, which they did for 2020 and 21. But then you would still beat the rollover DMs if you actaully earned the DM status for the year (the same way I am beating this rollover PM guys since I “earn” the PM status every year)
I wonder how much MS Gary and Lucky had to do for this.
You’re Sad and jealous…you didn’t get the miles or the status. Don’t be so envious and pessimistic.
I am. As well, I’m angry. But I don’t see where Matthew is. In fact, I thought he handled this well in expressing the reality and his sincere feelings. Further, no one is necessarily angry at the recipients. They scored, and scored big. We are angry at AA for degradation of the program, disregard for decades of long loyal customers, and turning a once decent airline into a company that kicks tens of thousands of its customers in the chukkie chukkies without batting en eye.
@ Stuart — If people are given CK for non-flying, that also means they wont be getting much from CK, since the benefits actually require flying. These new CK’s will have virtually no impact on other flyers. It is not worth being upset over. A couple of people who are wiling to waste huge amounts of money to have their ego stroked will be convinced to give AA a bunch of profit to renew their CK status. Good for AA selling sego-stroking services to a handful of fools.
THIS.
So the guy down the street gets status, even CK for using the shopping portal, Bask Bank, Aadvantage dining and 2 round trips on AA per year.
(1) that person, when he DOES fly, is now likely to use the miles for a premium cabin award trip.
(2) that person trumps those who earn through AA spend on the rare occasion that he flies – with status, such may increase from once a year to three times a year.
Road warriors who earn through spend on flights have little to fear from such occasional travelers.
Quick question which you don’t need to answer is this, if you had known last December when American announced the deal that they in 2022 would bestow ConciergeKey status on many of the top donators would you have participated in the deal?
If the answer is yes then you can be angry at AA either for not disclosing every detail of the program. If AA would have told customers then end result of donating a large sum of money is ConciergeKey status I think a lot more people who have participated than actually did.
Think of it this way their ConciergeKey status is only temporary it isn’t a life time bestowal. If they don’t re-qualify by actually spending top dollar on American Airlines over the next 12 months then they will drop back down.
@proschwit. If you are referring to the Simply Miles deal than the answer is yes. I was teetering at the time as to throwing down on it BUT I held back believing that it was a mistake and would not be honored. And I was not about to get into a fight with $30K hanging in the air. Further, at that point, given how AA was now going to be throwing ExecPlat status to pretty much anyone with a modest credit card spend, I had made the decision to move on from AA to UA, where I feel there is more value given to top tier members who actually fly on planes.
But yes, had this been disclosed that it would result in CK, I would have absolutely jumped in at that point. That would have been a deal too hard to not take a chance on, even if it didn’t go through in the end. As well, if it did (which it did) it would have cemented me for another year to stay with AA as I could finally sample the fruits of CK.
Beyond that, my anger is also in that I spent so many decades as an Exec Plat, often spending upwards of $40K+ a year, have flown 3M miles, and never even got a response the few times I asked them to look at what I have given thus far and let me know what more they need for CK. To see this just loosely handed out now is so insulting, it’s beyond belief. What a waste of decades with AA. That’s fine, I took my last AA flight in March (ones that had been booked prior) and converted to UA. I am happy with UA and Star Alliance despite the service being really not much different I didn’t even bother to status match this month as I am only one flight away from 1K with just regular flying since April.
Am I the jealous bitter bridesmaid? You bet I am. I’ll own that. I believe though it’s a righteous bitterness in this case.
Stuart,
You refer to ” AA was now going to be throwing ExecPlat status to pretty much anyone with a modest credit card spend”.
Fine. Someone who earns one mile per dollar on an aadvantage earning CC in lieu of alternatives, which can be 2 miles for the Citi Custom Cash, or up to 5 miles on bonus categories on particular cards needs an incentive to be peeled away by Aadvantage.
Willingness to forego alternatives is the essence of loyalty. To be certain, one Aadvantage mile per dollar charged is seldom the best and highest play to make. Nor is using the Aadvantage shopping portal when Rakuten and others may have superior goodies. With this in mind, it may not fit into your method of securing status, but the Loyalty Points scheme secures the attention and loyalty of participants who would take their business elsewhere.
@JFHScott. I get the reasoning and I know full well the why. However, I truly believe this is not well thought out and will result in a “be careful what you wish for” scenario for AA. The debacle at Lounges this summer is a perfect example. Give it to everyone and you start pissing everyone off, even those who don’t actually fly much. Further, these same people come with a lot of demands and issues given they are not understanding the system as clearly as we do. An example are the lines behind all the families getting into lounges who are holding everyone up arguing that they have the magic card so why can’t all five of them enter?
From my perspective AA is an airline. And I need to fly every week. I want the airline I choose to have an elite program that recognizes me for FLYING, not buying socks on Rakutan. I understand that anymore it’s the same to AA. But to me it’s not and (for now) I have a choice. In the end I see next year being a debacle of decades long AA butt in seat loyalists like me realizing just how crazy it is, and as such bailing out in droves. seat allocations, boarding, lounges, upgrade lists, check in areas…everything…it will be exactly like you are seeing at lounges this summer. by 2024 those butt in seat loyalists will start moving on (or have already like me) and AA will be left with sock buyers on Rakutan as their elite core. Not those like me that often purchase last minute intl premium cabins in my needs to get places fast for deals.
Does AA have a solution? Yes, it could have made CK more attainable by publishing criteria that would fit more towards flyers like me, thereby saving them from defection and having to compete with the Rakutan crowd. I mean, they are giving it away to shoppers anyway (albeit a mistake) so if you are going to degrade it at least save some people in the process you may not want to lose. Alternatively, they could have even created a CK Lite or ExecPlat Premium that would have helped separate things a bit to address what will be a crazy year next year.
Finally, I think this is exactly why you see AA going it alone with such an easy approach now to status. Sure, I imagine the others are watching and studying it, but I think they also sense that when business travel fully recovers it is going to become a Sh$T show.
If I had known that the opportunity would “work” and that miles would not be yanked away retroactively, I would have participated. With all the publicity and the scale with which advantage players were working, I thought it likely that AA would overreact and retroactively un-award the miles. They did something like that to a close friend of mine, 20 years ago, who got several hundred thousand miles though a link where MGM casino players were given AA miles for their casino play. But when she gave her brother in China miles to use for a ticket, they suddenly changed their mind, revoked the ticket mid-travel, revoked the other miles in her account, and closed her account entirely. Her “free” miles cost her and her brother over $10,000 to make a trip he would never have made without that program.
It must be unfair since this was enough to trigger @Debit.
I’m more interested to see how these folks benefit from CK in the next 8 months. Might be interesting. I only bought 1 million miles in the simplymile deal so I didn’t get an invite but the worst thing is that AA miles seem to be dramatically going down in value for premium cabin awards.
If you had received an invite for buying 1 million miles would you have turned it down? Or would have accepted the invitation and thus contributed to the continued devaluation of premium cabin awards?
@Jan: I live in a Delta hub airport. Not exaggerating at all. I already got over the MQD requirement for Diamond and with the rollover I have over 250k MQMs so far to move into next year. Add to that over 50 people waiting outside the Delta lounge to get in and Delta has become a disaster airline.
Well, as one of them, I am keenly interested as well.
Problem is I have a job. I was already Platinum Pro, which I have been able to use once. As a surprised and delighted CK, I may program a couple of extra trips before I lose it, but not nearly enough to put a dent into the uprgrade opportunities of Ex Plats who I leapfrogged. And I have no control over what airline I travel on when I am on business. And, given that I have millions of aadvantage miles, when I want a premium cabin for leisure, I can get it already.
Flying JFK-NRT with P2 & Teenage P3 next week on JAL First on miles from the SimplyMiles promotion with plenty left to spend. I didn’t buy nearly enough for CK on AA. I’m still happy with my decision to get in when I could. Good for whoever received CK from this deal as a side effect. Makes the game even sweeter 🙂
Dang… I wish I had a spare $30,000 to spend on miles. Even it you did get multiple millions. That’s still a lot of cash to tie up in a questionable asset.
And the thing is, it wasn’t even outright buying miles, it was donating to a charity to then have the miles be awarded as part of the donation. Just crazy! I’d really like to see this charity investigated. They must have gotten a huge influx of cash from this. Wonder what it’s being spent on? My guess is the CEO and other executive salaries.
As an Executive Platinum who spend above the threshold but not nearly close to the $50,000 estimated marker for CK consistently each yeatlr, I find this hold thing to be insulting to actual loyal metal customers. This hold spend scheme where people are being rewarded with loyalty status as it is so called name now is insane. I have long ago requalified for EP through 2024 by flying on AA metal and they don’t even for a moment think people like me are worthy enough to retain. They rather “reward” the guy who hoping from airline to airline, status matching and worst don’t even fly with them, just collecting miles. It’s crazy. I don’t have the luxury to say I’m switching to another airline because AA is it for my home airport.
You do know they gift this status to pretty much any z list celeb they think might help their image? This idea that this is something to be earned is insane. People acting like they just learned their wife was cheating on them or something.
Get a life. You paid for a ticket, they took you where you wanted to go. That is the extent of their obligation.
Well, why are you here reading blogs about loyalty and points and how it impacts the 300 days (in my case) you travel each year? Asking for a friend.
Look, there was a bit of risk in doing this (simply miles promotion). If we all had perfect future knowledge then we all would have participated, and made out as well as Lucky and Gary. But we didn’t know, and I didn’t want to risk the debacle of it not working out. Gary and Lucky took the gamble, and it paid off handsomely, No animosity towards anyone in that deal, and good for Lucky and Gary. On to the next deal. If you weren’t willing to take the risk, don’t be upset with any one party other than yourself.
I don’t think anyone is upset at Gary and Ben. There is irony, sure, like the fact that Gary is a CK now a week after declaring AA is verging on bankruptcy, but that is just irony, and sort of funny. The reality is that many of us are mad at AA alone. They alienated many of us in this shabby process of degradation. It’s all on AA. And it shows how little they actually care or want to understand those that gave them so much over so many years. They don’t even have a clue. That’s fine, I’ll throw down with UA but I will be more cautious now even with them. None of them deserve much of anything, AA especially.
Wish I had bought 5x the amount of miles I did :(. Still I can’t complain. $700 return for my wife and I to fly biz to Asia from Sydney.
Still quite a lot of availability on Malaysia especially to and from oz.
Be careful with seeing Malaysia awards showing available on AA. There is a glitch. They often have seats showing until you actually go to the booking process and you get an error message that “the seats are no longer available.” I have tried it numerous times on many routes and days between KL and LHR and SYD. Always showing seats on every day until you try and book. You call an agent and they tell you it appears to be phantom as they can’t actually book it either.
Thanks for the heads up!!
I managed to book syd to kl to Singapore with Malaysian and then back direct on ba.
Have always wanted to take this redemption. 40k for biz and I think 50k for first if it exists.
How do you know he got status for buying those miles? AA does give out status for influencers including CK they’ve done it before…
Congrats to those who got the status, and the author doesn’t seem the least bit bitter to me.
I didn’t do the AA promo, as I already secured OWE status for my partner and me through the AY promotion earlier in the month. This turned out to be far more lucrative than we could ever have imagined. No regrets, especially at the price point.