Elite Aadvantage levels: Reach the highest level of the reward program
Earn points, miles and qualifying segments for travel on qualifying tickets on: American Airlines, a global member airline and its affiliates, Alaska Airlines (including Horizon Air), US Airways (including US Airways Express and US Airways Shuttle) and American Airlines code share flights where the ticket reflects an American Airlines coded flight number.
Elite Status Points
The number of Elite status points you earn is based on a combination of miles earned and class of service purchased. Below are tables reflecting the number of points earned for travel on American Airlines and American Eagle as well as on code share flights marketed by American Airlines. For more information on points earned for travel on airlines participating in AAdvantage, select the links above to visit the appropriate airlines page.
Example: A flight on American Airlines from DFW to New York LaGuardia = 1389 base miles. If you purchase a full fare economy class ticket booked in “Y”, you will earn 1.50 points per mile according to the table below. 1389 base miles x 1.50 points per mile = 2084 points earned towards elite status.
Qualifying points per mile earned on American Airlines
| Price purchased | Booking class | Points per eligible mile earned |
| First class | A, F, P | 1,50 |
| Business class | D, I, J, R | 1,50 |
| Full fare economy class | B, Y, W | 1,50 |
| Economy class discount | H, K, M, L, W, V | 1,00 |
| Economy Class at Deep Discount | G, Q, N, O, S | 0,50 |
Miles or segments
Eligible miles are the actual miles or segments you earn on tickets purchased eligible for flights on American Airlines flights and member airlines of Oneworld and their affiliates, Alaska Airlines including Horizon Air , US Airways and US Airways Express and US Airways Shuttle and / or codeshare flights marketed by American Airlines (ticket must reflect an American Airlines coded flight number), including applicable minimum mileage guarantees.
The moment you reach the amount of miles required to achieve a new status, American Airlines will contact you.
Here are all the possibilities to qualify for elite status by accumulating the required number of miles, points or segments during a calendar year:
| Qualification | Executive Platinum One World Emerald |
Platine Pro One World Saphir |
Platine One World Saphir |
Gold one world Rubis |
| EQM | 100.000 | 75.000 | 50.000 | 25000 |
| EQS | 120 | 90 | 60 | 30 |
| EQD | 150.000 | 9000 | 6000 | 3000 |
| Elite Status | Miles or Points Required | Segments Required |
| Executive Platinum | 100,000 | 100 |
| Platinum | 50,000 | 60 |
| Gold | 25,000 | 30 |
Standard elite status qualification levels
– Qualification and membership periods
Subscribers can receive elite benefits immediately upon qualification. You can continue to enjoy the benefits of your status until the end of the next membership year.
– Membership period:
The membership year runs from March 1 to the last day of February of the following year.
– Here are some examples of this elite qualification schedule:
By successfully accumulating 25,000 elite points or miles on July 31, 2021, your AAdvantage Gold membership is valid until February 29, 2023. And if for example, you collect 25,000 elite points or elite miles on January 31, 2022, your AAdvantage Gold membership is valid until February 29, 2024.
Since you begin receiving Elite Points immediately upon qualification, the start of your membership year is the day you qualify for your Elite level.
For members achieving Gold or Platinum status, you earn four 500 Mile Upgrades for every 10,000 qualifying miles traveled during your membership year. The mileage counters that are used to determine the number of 500 mile upgrades earned are reset every March 1.
Obtaining Elite status on a loyalty program and the benefits that go with it is often seen as an impossible quest. And most often it is. But there are some tips for gaining status without too much effort.
Upgrades, priority queues, late check-out, access to lounges, … the benefits that this loyalty program gives to its most loyal members are very often more than appreciable. But as the name suggests, these benefits only flow to the most loyal and the thresholds necessary to achieve them are often too high for most travelers.
It’s impossible to consider a gold, let alone a platinum, on American Airlines’s Aadvantage program without doing a few very long business or premier hauls per year.
If you have subscribed to an airline loyalty program, you have surely heard of elite status. But what are they? What do they represent? How to get them? And even more, how to get them faster or easier?
What are Elite statuses?
Elite statuses represent the various thresholds through which you pass when you are a loyal subscriber to a loyalty program like Aadvantage. A well-known fact is that the more you travel on the airline or partner companies of the program or the more nights you spend in the hotels of the program chain, the more miles or points you will accumulate. In doing so, you also accumulate qualifying miles or qualifying points allowing you to reach a threshold of Elite status, and therefore improve your status.
This can take many forms, from experience points at Aadvantage to nights or stays in hotel programs, but also miles segments in other programs launched by partner companies, the fact is that each time you consume a service of the hotel. One of these programs you somehow accumulate an opportunity to raise your status.
A loyalty program generally allows you to accumulate points that you can turn into a benefit: either free plane tickets, free hotel nights or finally free car rentals. But that’s not all.
By allowing you to progress to Elite status, the programs of the various hotel and airline chains recognize that you are a loyal customer and benefit you even more when you return regularly to consume their service.
For example, if you travel often on American Airlines or its partner airlines, after a certain time you can obtain an Elite Gold status which will allow you to access the boarding lounges, with free drinks and meals and a very comfortable space to wait for your flight.
Be careful, however, the frequency of consumption is important: you must regularly consume their services: for this they assess your regularity during windows of a calendar year generally or a sliding year but over well-defined periods.
So the idea is to be able to reward the best customers who come back often to their hotel chains or who often take their airline programs and give them benefits that other customers cannot have, even being a member of the loyalty program.
What are the advantages of elite status?
They differ according to the types of program but generally they revolve around several types of advantages: pFor airlines, this is either the possibility of automatic upgrade, or the possibility of quickly passing the police and security formalities but it can also be preferential prices on “plus” seats or even the possibility of accumulating more miles than a member of a lower status.
For example, people with Gold status from the AAdvantage loyalty program can access the lounge with a guest of their choice, use the Sky Priority route to go through formalities faster, have 50% reduction on Grand Comfort seats, obtain luggage additional free with each flight, earn more miles with each flight, choose your seat when purchasing the ticket.