American Airlines has unveiled major changes in its AAdvantage loyalty scheme, but not the ones that many experts were expecting. Instead of ending the use of award charts for travel, the airline focused its changes on the ‘loyalty’ side of the equation, making it potentially easier to earn elite status.
American has been the last of the airlines to provide a chart of how many points are needed for trips to its range of destinations while the other U.S. legacy airlines have switched to a dynamic pricing model that allows a ticket to a particular destination to have a different price in points depending on demand and other factors.
Under American’s new scheme, qualifying for elite status and the special rewards that go with it will be simpler to track, because everything will be measured in ‘loyalty points,’ rather than in combinations of dollars spent, miles flown and segments flown. Those items will now translate into different numbers of Loyalty Points to earn elite status.
One big change is that in the past elite status could only be earned by flying on AA and its partner airlines; miles earned by spending using co-branded credit cards and other spending did not count toward elite status. Now they will, although they will not earn as many as can be earned by flying, especially in premium seats.
In essence, American has divided its program into two currencies: AAdvantage miles that can be spent for seats, upgrades, onboard food, etc., and Loyalty Points that add up, hopefully, to elite status. Transactions that earn Loyalty Points also earn AAdvantage, but not as many. By opening up more ways of getting to elite, American hopes to create more loyalty.
One group that won’t be that happy, though, are those already in the habit of elite status; some of the new perks offered to those with elite status have been broken down into several levels and require additional earning of segments.
