buying your way to the next tier

[Grooba]

Just saw a thread over on FT about AA allowing pax to buy their way up to the next elite status level.

Quite an interesting concept!

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New ways to meet elite starting in January 2014 - FlyerTalk Forums

 

[doctau]

In a certain sense you could always buy into the higher tiers, it just took time as well as money, by paying for flights.

$1199 to get EXP if you're 5k miles off, and $1799 is you're 10k off? From what I read, that's enough to get OWE from no status via a QF-directed YUPP run if you can get the squiggles.

If you're under 5/10k miles off, I would think they money would get you there anyway as long as you aren't completely out of time.

 

[kempvet]

This does make some sense for an Aussie based elite AA member, there are often posts about being 5k short of the tier qualifying miles, could save a few the time and cost of doing a SYD-SIN-SYD with BA or a few SYD-AKL-SYD flights with LAN