Questions and Answers

Hello,
Been a reader for about a year usual internet lurker but I have some travel coming up and I saw that they might still be doing the AA status challenge.

I’m flying this route :
CVG –> ORD –> NRT –> DFW –> CVG

CVG –> ORD : Y class economy AA
ORD –> NRT : X class JAL
NRT –> DFW : X class JAL
DFW –> CVG : I class AA

From the basic number crunching it looks like I’ll definitely get the EQM and I believe the EQD as well. I’m just not sure if it will be worth it to pay the $300, or $500 to get Gold or Platinum status during the challenge.

Gold earns 40% bonus and Plat is 60% but I’m not sure how that works outs on partner airlines.

ORD –> NRT is roughly 6260 miles so 8764/10016 redeemable miles for that segment?

I booked JFK –> DOH –> SIN –> DOH –> JFK from your post on Qatar for July so I’m debating this status challenge.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Hi, do you have travel regularly besides these two trips? Status becomes very nice when you fly regularly, but would probably be a waste of $500 of you only travel 1-2 per year. And, you’re already in business class so service/lounge access/etc, won’t be much different.

Did you book the Tokyo trip through American or Japan Airlines?

Here is Lucky’s info on status challenge from last month:
[URL]http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2017/01/03/american-status-challenge-2017/[/URL]

Thanks for the input.

I don’t have a lot of travel planned this year besides these two. Maybe another trip to Japan in November but that’s about it.

Is the $200 charge to start the challenge charged directly by AA? I’m just curious whether I should use my Amex Platinum or a different card for this charge.

I’m not sure how the ticket was booked. It was done by a travel agency that the company I work for uses. The flight shows JL9 & 12 so booked through JAL perhaps?

I believe the ticket was rather expensive (5k?) if so I believe I should ask them to book it through AA?

I’ve never done a challenge before, but I can’t think of any reason why it wouldn’t be processed by AA directly.

If the trip was expensive, then yes you’ll definitely want to book through AA if you have the choice. All the new revenue based systems benefit travelers who book expensive tickets and typically “penalize” the traveler who books cheap fares by giving them less miles.

Actually, with the extra info about the cost of your ticket, I think the fee to do the challenge makes much more sense now. The extra mileage multiplier by being a Platinum on a $5,000 ticket would be 10,000 redeemable miles. Which seems worth $200 to me…