It has been sometime since I gave an up update on my loyalty points journey as a fast track to earning top tier American Airlines Status. For those who weren’t around in the beginning, I started this experiment to see if it was possible to earn top tier Airline Status with minimal flying. I started in April and here is my Update!
Currently Balance
I’m currently at about 107,000 loyalty points leaving me 18,000 away from earning AA Platinum Pro. I’m also waiting on about 4500 points to post so I’m likely about 12,500 away. To earn AA Executive Platinum, I would need to earn 88,500 more loyalty points and currently that does not seem feasible.
My Earnings for July/August
For July and August, I earned the majority of my points through spend on my Citi AA Business Card or by using the AA Advantage Shopping Portal. Both are fantastic ways to earn additional miles and points. While I also occasionally take advantage of a few simply miles deals, there were no good offers in the last two months.
My Thoughts
Since I am doing this for an experiment I’m going to continue to push and see where 2022 takes me. After this year, I see little reason to try to achieve top tier American status as I travel only for leisure and I avoid flying American. Rather, I utilize my status with Alaska Airlines for seat upgrades and free checked bags due to Alaska’s Oneworld membership. This challenge also allowed me to fully understand the absurdity of status chasing for airlines if you are not a business traveler. I know a solid amount of people attempting to chase airline status with American, but if you only take several trips a year is it really worth the work? In general, unless I have lots of planned travel or there is a generous shopping portal offer, I wouldn’t go out of the way to chase airline elite status.
