American Airlines AAdvantage Gold Pass
How cool would it be if airlines just sold their valuable status for a price? I mean hotels do it all the time just by carrying certain cards, so why not airlines. It looks like American Airlines is picking up what we are laying down. That is because they are trying to do just that with their American Airlines AAdvantage Gold pass. The problem is … this thing is horrible. I hope you really, really like those AAdvantage Gold luggage tags. Let's take a look at this $5,000 joke.
Details Of The Offer
Yes, you read that right, the AAdvantage Gold pass comes with a healthy $5,000 price tag. Here is what you get for laying out the money for a Super Bowl ticket:
- AAdvantage Gold status for one year, which gets you:
- 40% more miles and Loyalty Points
- Priority check-in, security and boarding
- Complimentary upgrades within North America if available
- First checked bag free
- Complimentary Preferred Seats at booking and Main Cabin Extra at check-in
- 100,000 AAdvantage bonus miles
- 15,000 Loyalty Points
And … that is it. Not much meat on that bone is there? The 100,000 AAdvantage miles is the only thing of real value here. I would peg those at around $1,500 – $2,000 in value. The cost to buy them would be $2,600 right now for what it is worth. The rest of it? Pretty much $0. What good does 15,000 Loyalty points do you if you don't already have AAdvantage Gold status, which requires 40,000 Loyalty points to earn? That doesn't even get you half way to the level you get after dropping $5,000 on the table. They could at least give you the 40,000 point head start so you are even with the status you now have.
You might think the perks of AAdvantage Gold status offers some value. Wrong! You don't even get Main Cabin Extra seats until check in, which puts you behind 3 other tiers of elites that gobbled them up at booking or days before the flight. Heck, you would be better off dropping $4500 to buy 200,000 AAdvantage miles instead. That is especially true if this is a gift, as I assume they planned this to be.
American Airlines AAdvantage Gold Pass: ToP Thoughts
While I would love to be able to buy airline status this American Airlines AAdvantage Gold pass just is not it. I get that they are going to over value the status when selling it, but we need to get at least in the ballpark of break even to get our mental gymnastics flowing. If this package cost $3,000 then I could see it being a consideration. It would even be something I could see people that already have Gold status or above leaning into if that 15,000 Loyalty Points got them to the next level of status. If they gave the 40,000 Loyalty Points that AAdvantage Gold requires then people would kick the tires on this $5,000 package for those same reasons. American Airlines had a chance to print some money here for things that don't really cost them all that much, but they missed the boat completely. Maybe next year they will do a bit better.
Link To Offer
HT: DDG
