This is it. 2017 appears to finally be the year that I earn American Airlines Executive Platinum elite status. Executive Platinum is my white whale. In 2015 I flew over 50,000 miles before June and was well on my way before my life changed forever. My company announced plans to sell to a competitor and I jumped ship. In 2016 I moved jobs again and decided to fly Delta Air Lines as my primary carrier. That year I reached Delta Gold Elite status, but realized Delta wasn’t for me. I instead switched back to American and only reached American Gold Elite status in 2016. Now, in 2017 it seems I’m well on track to reach Executive Platinum.
As I inch closer to this elusive benchmark I’m starting to wonder if Executive Platinum is right for me. I generally don’t fly 100,000 miles each year organically. This year I’ll have to complete a fairly insane mileage run to hit that mark. I’m also starting to question if I really value the benefits of Executive Platinum status or am I simply chasing those black and silver brag tags.
As I sit here questioning my decisions I’ve come up with an interesting question. Does it make sense for me to credit my OneWorld (American) flights to the AAdvantage program or am I better off crediting my flights to British Airways?
Crediting Flights To An Alliance Partner
If you live in the United States chances are you fly on a small handful of airlines. For simplification we’ll ignore Southwest, Alaska, and JetBlue for now. Oh and we’ll of course exclude Spirt, Frontier, Allegiant, Sun County and any other discount carriers you can think of. What we’re left with (selectively) are the big 3. Not the ME3 but the US3 (not the music group).
The US3 carriers are American, United, and Delta. All three fly to nearly every US city imaginable and chances are you’ve flown on one or all three before. When you fly each airline you can earn that airlines miles and potentially earn status with one or all three over time. To earn status you must register and open a frequent flyer account. Each time you fly you must enter that frequent flyer account into your reservation and you’ll earn miles, segments, and elite qualifying dollars for each flight. The whole concept is simple enough and I can’t imagine many people don’t already know this. What you might not know is that you can actually credit those miles and flights to partner airlines.
See, each of the US3 airlines are members of an Airline Alliance. American is part of OneWorld, United is a member of the Star Alliance, and Delta partners with Sky Team. Each alliance maintains several partner airlines. These partnerships are mostly beneficial to travelers thanks to various codeshare agreements. For example, I can fly on a British Airways operated flight, but earn American miles in the process. Furthermore, I’ll also get a few elite benefits when flying with British Airways if I maintain elite status with American. What’s interesting is that when traveling with an Alliance partner you can also credit miles to a seemingly random partner airline.
Crediting OneWorld Flights To British Airways
Thanks to the OneWorld alliance you can credit your American Airlines flights to the AAdvantage program or instead credit to the British Airways Executive Club. Of course you could credit miles to any other OneWorld partner airline, but for my purposes I’ll stick to British Airways for now. If you credit all of your OneWorld flights to British Airways you’ll eventually begin earning Executive Club status.
British Airways’ Executive Club uses “Tier Points” as a qualifier for elite status. American uses the Elite Qualifying Dollars (EQD) and Elite Qualifying Miles (EQM) for reference. BA Tier Points are calculated as a function of miles flown and fare class. Tier Points mostly resemble American EQDs. It doesn’t make much sense to credit short expensive economy flights with AA flight numbers to the BA program, but it definitely makes sense to credit long cheap economy flights to BA. Likewise, it also makes sense to credit inexpensive (relatively) long haul business class or above flights to the BA Executive Club. For now understanding that principle is enough to move on. I’ll circle back and do a more detailed analysis of the two programs in a future post.
Earning American Airlines AAdvantage Executive Platinum Status
To earn Executive Platinum status you must earn a total of $12,000 EQD (Elite Qualifying Dollars) and 100,000 EQM (Elite Qualifying Miles) in a calendar year. There are several ways to do this, but it’s easiest and cheapest to buy AA Special Fares or credit premium cabin flights on OneWorld carriers to the AAdvantage program. American of course prefers you to spend $12,000 on AA flights instead. Either way it doesn’t matter how you attain those numbers as long as you do. Once completed you’ll earn AAdvantage Executive Platinum elite status for the remainder of the year earned and the following calendar year.
AAdvantage Executive Platinum Elite Benefits
Earning Executive Platinum status is a huge milestone. Once completed you’ll earn some seriously useful benefits for the remainder of the year earned and the following calendar year. In brief, AAdvantage Executive Platinum benefits are as follows:
- 4 Systemwide Upgrades
- Unlimited complimentary upgrades on domestic flights
- 100 hour upgrade window for domestic upgrades
- Earn 120% AAdvantage mile bonus with each flight
- Complimentary access to Main Cabin Extra seats at the time of booking
- Discounted Admirals Club membership rates
- OneWorld Emerald Status
Essentially, when available you’ll get unlimited upgrades to domestic first class (business class for Transcon flights). You’ll also get 4 systemwide upgrades which you can use to bump you from economy to business class on international flights. Most importantly, you’ll also earn OneWorld Emerald status. OneWorld Emerald status opens a wide variety of doors (literally) when traveling internationally on OneWorld partner airlines.
With OneWorld Emerald status you’ll have access to OneWorld Emerald lounges around the world. These include British Airways lounges, Qantas lounges, Qatar Airways lounges, etc. Sadly there is one MAJOR exception to this policy. Per OneWorld:
American Airlines AAdvantage® members, regardless of their tier status or class of travel, are not eligible for lounge access when travelling solely on North American flights within or between the U.S., Canada, Mexico (except Mexico City), the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Caribbean. For more information, visit, http://www.aa.com/i18n/travelInformation/airportAmenities/AdmiralsClub.jsp
AAdvantage Executive Platinum members don’t have lounge access when traveling domestically. The only ways to get into lounges when traveling domestically are Priority Pass membership, Admirals Club membership, or the Citi Executive AAdvantage credit card. None of those options are cheap either. In nearly every case you’ll have to pay at least $450 annually to access lounges when flying within North America.
British Airways Executive Gold Elite Status Benefits
If you fly enough to earn AAdvantage Executive Platinum status there is a good chance you’d earn Executive Club Gold status with British Airways as well. In total, to earn Executive Club Gold status you need to earn 1,500 Tier Points and fly a minimum of 4 segments on British Airways operated flights. I’ll go more into earning Tier Points in a later post, but for now we’ll focus on the benefits.
Executive Club Gold Elite benefits include the following:
- Gold elites earn 2X Avios (redeemable miles) on all flights
- Guaranteed seats when booking with Avios (if you pay double the price…?)
- Unlimited access to British Airways Lounges (Not Concord Lounge)
- Access to Arrivals Lounges when traveling internationally
- Access to Priority Check-In, Security, and Boarding lanes
- OneWorld Emerald Status
Although the two programs offer similar benefits to their top-tier elites, there is one notable difference. As a British Airways Gold Elite member you’ll have access to ALL OneWorld Emerald lounges. That means you’ll have access to Admirals Club lounges when traveling on American within North America.
Which Program To Pick?
This is where I’m completely torn. I value Admirals Club access quite a bit. So the ability to use Admirals Clubs when traveling domestically for free is appealing.
Furthermore, Avios are quite useful for booking flights on American, especially domestic flights. Avios redemptions are based on the miles flown so short-haul domestic flights are quite inexpensive (7,500 Avios).
On the other hand, I also value domestic upgrades. It’s pretty nice sitting up front and getting a free terrible meal and complimentary alcohol when flying domestically. Also the 4 systemwide upgrades are incredibly valuable when used properly.
Lastly, I’m torn because of my current travel patterns. The bulk of the miles I’ve earned this year are from international premium cabin trips. When flying in a premium cabin you generally have access to international airport lounges. This means the whole Admirals Club access argument is void.
Final Thoughts
As you can see there are some interesting benefits of earning BA Gold status over AAdvantage Executive Platinum status. You’d of course miss out on domestic upgrades with AA, but you’d gain access to AA lounges in the process. Admirals Club lounge access sounds great, but I’m also starting to wonder how often I’d actually use them when traveling. See most of my travel these days is personal. Since the travel is personal I generally am looking to get from A-B as quickly as possible. Sure I’m still looking to book a crazy routing whenever I travel, but for the most part I’m no longer hanging out in airports for hours on end.
I’m also traveling less frequently than I once was. Two years ago I took 60 flights halfway though the year. This year I’ve only taken 24 flights. Since I’m flying less I’m also running into less irregular operations (IROPS). I’m no longer scrambling to the Admirals Club to get a beneficial rerouting or trying to standby on the earlier flight. I just don’t know if I’ll get as much use from Admirals Clubs as I once did.
Lastly, I’ve started trying to book more discount premium cabin flights. When traveling in a premium cabin I receive lounge access anyway. For example on my upcoming Qatar Business Class mileage run I’ll have lounge access at each airport I visit. Having double lounge access from BA Gold status doesn’t really mean anything in this case.
Overall, I’m going to stick to crediting my OneWorld flights to the AAdvantage program and shoot for Executive Platinum status. That being said, I think it’s always important to shop around when selecting a loyalty program to select the program that works best for you.
Featured Image Courtesy of British Airways
