Update: I assumed and hoped this would be the case, but a few hours after posting this article my buy up offer once again changed. This time American offered that I pay just $495 to buy up to AAdvantage Platinum Pro Status. This updated offer is more in line with approximately how far away I currently am from earning the status from flying.
Original Post, You Can Skip This If You’d Like
Greetings from Ho Chi Minh Vietnam! I’m currently in the middle of an insane mileage run for 2018 American Airlines AAdvantage Elite status. This has truly been the trip of a lifetime. Also, I’m happy to report that I’m just a few EQD short of qualifying for AAdvantage Platinum Pro. I’ve been on airplanes for the past week and earning miles EQD/EQM at a rapid rate.
During my trip, somewhere over India, I finally qualified for AAdvantage Platinum status. My miles posted within a few hours of landing in Doha Qatar and shortly thereafter I received an email from American which informed me that I reached AAdvantage Platinum status.
Then, a few hours later, I received a second email from American. The subject of the email simply said “Get Platinum Pro Status Now” and contained an updated elite status buy up offer. As I had done previously, I entered my login information and quickly found my new offer. As you can guess from the heading of this post, this is where things got ugly.
My New Insulting AAdvantage Platinum Pro Buy Up Offer
Just over a week ago I wrote about my first AAdvantage buy up offer. The first offer, equally terrible, was to get AAdvantage Platinum status from the time of payment all the way through January 2018 for a whopping $1,865! I viewed that as a terrible deal at the time because I could have spent that money on a flight and earned the status organically.
Then, as I mentioned, yesterday I received a new buy up offer. This time the offer was to buy up to AAdvantage Platinum Pro status since I recently qualified for AAdvantage Platinum status. Immediately after receiving the email I logged into my AAdvantage account. I wanted to see how close I was to earning AAdvantage Platinum Pro status on my own.
When I logged in I discovered I had already earned enough EQM, but was just $400 EQD short of earning Platinum Pro status. Since I was so close to earning the status through flying I figured the offer would reflect that, but it didn’t.
My new buy up offer was to pay $2,699 for AAdvantage Platinum Pro status! Obviously this is not an offer worth taking.
Final Thoughts
I’m not exactly sure what is going on behind the scenes of the buy up offers this year. In years past, American published a handy chart which told AAdvantage members with certain EQM how much they’d need to pay to buy up to status. The further away from the status you were, the more you could expect to pay.
This year however, I can’t even guess how American is coming up with these offers. My first offers was at least close to a 1:1 offer. That means that I’d spend about the same amount of money buying flights or paying for status outright. This time however the offer isn’t even close. At this point I could buy a $500 first class flight from Chicago to St. Louis and qualify for Platinum Pro status. I find it completely insulting that American would even present this absurd dollar amount as a buy up offer.
It’s worth noting that I’ll hit Platinum Pro after completing my next flight from Ho Chi Minh to Doha (departing in an hour). Miles have been posting extremely quickly after completing these flights. I hope to have an updated offer soon. By the weekend I expect I’ll find an offer to buy up to Executive Platinum status. I look forward to seeing the updated offer and will report back once I see what it is.
Lastly, you can check to see if you have a buy up offer available to you by clicking this link and logging into your AAdvantage account.
