American AAdvantage Improves Million Miler Program: Long Overdue

In December 2024, American Airlines announced plans to improve its million miler lifetime elite status program, to make it more competitive with other airlines.

There’s an exciting update, as this change is now live, a bit ahead of schedule, so eligible members should see their elevated status live. The lifetime elite status program is now a lot better, but still not great. This development is part of a larger announcement about AAdvantage program changes for 2025.

American adds lifetime Platinum Pro, Executive Platinum status

All of the “big three” US carriers have lifetime elite status program, and historically, American’s program has been by far the most underwhelming. Prior to now, you’ve received lifetime AAdvantage Gold status when passing one million miles, and lifetime AAdvantage Platinum status when passing two million miles.

Effective immediately, there are new lifetime status thresholds. Specifically, American now offers lifetime AAdvantage Platinum Pro status when passing four million miles, and lifetime AAdvantage Executive Platinum status when passing five million miles.

For those wondering what qualifies as miles for the purposes of lifetime elite status, nowadays only flight distance on American operated flights, plus the base miles earned for travel on eligible partner marketed flights, count toward AAdvantage million miler status.

One of the issues that American has had with its million miler program is just how lucrative it was back in the day. Up until 2011, American counted all AAdvantage miles earned toward million miler status. In other words, if you earned two million miles with credit cards, you’d get AAdvantage Platinum status for life.

At the time that was extremely lucrative, especially since Platinum status was more valuable than it is now. An American loyalist could easily earn two million miler status with just a few years of loyalty. The issue is that with so many people having such inflated million miler balances, it has presumably limited American’s desire to improve the situation.

This is a huge improvement, still not that great

I’m delighted to see that American has added higher AAdvantage lifetime elite status thresholds. This is a significant step in the right direction, but it’s worth noting that American’s program still isn’t to the level of what you’ll find with competitors.

With the Delta SkyMiles lifetime elite status program, you can earn lifetime SkyMiles Gold status with one million miles, lifetime SkyMiles Platinum status with two million miles, lifetime SkyMiles Diamond status with three million miles, and lifetime Delta 360 status with five million miles.

Meanwhile with the United MileagePlus lifetime elite status program, you can earn lifetime MileagePlus Gold status with one million miles, lifetime MileagePlus Platinum status with two million miles, lifetime MileagePlus Premier 1K status with three million miles, and lifetime Global Services status with four million miles. Best of all, you can even nominate a companion to share the same status that you have in a particular year.

So while American’s new program is much improved, it’s still a far cry from what Delta and United offer, both in terms of the thresholds, the ability to earn invitation-only status, and in the event of United, being able to gift status to a companion.

I suspect the decision to not be as generous comes down to all the people who have millions of grandfathered lifetime miles from the old policy.

Bottom line

American AAdvantage has improved its lifetime elite status program. It’s now possible to unlock AAdvantage Platinum Pro status for life when passing four million miles, and to unlock AAdvantage Executive Platinum status for life when passing five million miles. This is awesome, though still rather lackluster compared to Delta SkyMiles and United MileagePlus.

What do you make of American’s million miler lifetime elite status changes?