Yesterday I posted about a targeted offer where some AAdvantage members received an email where they are being upgraded to Gold, Platinum, or Executive Platinum status and had the opportunity to maintain that status until February 28, 2015. While this is a great promotion/offer that some members received, unfortunately it is not available to everyone.
I posted the offer yesterday so folks could go back and check their email to see if they received this email as you do need to register, it is not automatically applied to your account.
Many people commented that they were able to register and were all excited. Unfortunately, American does not have the back-end system to not let you register if you weren’t targeted for the promotion. However, if you did not receive the targeted email you will not receive the promotion – even if you received an email confirmation email. That is how all American Airline promotions run, unless they are publicly available/listed on their offers page (which you can check out here – you must be logged into your AA account to view these promos) you must have received the targeted email.
However, if you are interested in obtaining Gold or Platinum through their typical challenge route, you can check out more on this prior post. To quickly recap, this offer is available for everyone! It is a challenge you can enroll in and you DO NOT need to have status on another airline.
Gold Challenge:
- Earn 5,000 Elite Qualifying Points* in a three month period
- Cost: $120
Platinum Challenge:
- Earn 10,000 Elite Qualifying Points* in a three month period
- Cost: $200
*Note that this is Elite Qualifying Points (EQP) and not Elite Qualifying Miles (EQM). EQP’s are based on the fare type, so it is important to look at this fare code when you are booking your flight and planning out your challenge strategy. Usually you earn more EQMs than EQPs on a flight.
The cost also fluctuates depending on when you enroll. If you enroll before June 16th of any calendar year, and meet the terms, you will be given status until February 28th of the following year. So if you enroll now, status will be good until February 28, 2014. If you enroll for a challenge after June 16th of any calendar year, and meet the terms, you will be given status until February 28th two years out. The cost of enrolling post June 16th is also more expensive since you have the opportunity to hold onto status longer. This prior post lists all the details you need to know regarding this!
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let me ask a dumb question: what is elite mileage bonus? Is it additional miles that can be used to book award flights? Is it just for status?
I’m new to the whole frequent flyer/status thing, but due to long hauls will have over 10k EQPs by June. Because of that, I want to see whether it will be worth it to pay $200 for the challenge. (I have five more flights on American during the year.)
@brent – they are bonus miles that you are earned that can be used to redeem for an award flight. So let’s say you earn 1,000 miles for your flight, if you have platinum status you’ll earn a 100% bonus, thus actually earning 2,000 miles in your account.
For the platinum challenge, you’ll earn the 100% bonus on the flight that got you platinum status plus those five additional flights. How many miles will you be earning for those 5 additional flights?
also, do you know if I am able to use flights that I have already flown (for instance, April 5, 2013) as part of my challenge?
@brent – you’d have to call aa to verify this, but they will go back to the 1st or the 16th of the month. So unfortunately April 5th is passed the time frame.
I’d have to check exactly how many since the plans/routes aren’t set in stone, but it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 15000 miles
@Brent – You’d need to see how you value the miles. The 15,000 miles for $200 would be purchasing miles at about 1.3 cents per mile.