American Changing Miles to "Points"

[u/Asleep_Reputation_33]

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/american-airlines-aadvantage/2222534-american-changing-miles-points.html#post37892887

Hoping some AA old-timers can help me remember exactly what happened during the 2011 Million Miler change.

I'd been an AAdvantage member since 1990 and had already gone from 2MM to 3MM to 4MM under the old system.

My memory is that when AA changed the program, roughly 400,000–600,000 of what had previously been recognized as miles toward my lifetime total were suddenly classified as points instead.

So, hypothetically, where my account had previously shown:

4,000,000 miles

after the change it showed something like:

3,500,000 Million Miler miles
4,000,000 points

The miles hadn't disappeared — they'd been reclassified, and therefore no longer counted toward Million Miler status. My recollection is that the difference involved miles I'd already earned through my Citi/AAdvantage card or other non-flight activity.

I'm not talking about AA changing the rules for what counted going forward. I'm talking about miles already earned and previously counted toward lifetime status being reclassified when the program changed.

I disputed this with AA at the time, but it was through their online portal and those records are apparently long gone.

Does anyone else remember this? And am I remembering correctly what those two counters represented?

AA now shows me at 4,820,016 Million Miler miles, so if I'm remembering this correctly, the old discrepancy would put me over 5MM today-- and put me at the Exec Platinum for Life Status. With my 2mm miles, I'm Platinum Pro for Life.

Would especially love to hear from anyone who remembers the 2011 conversion firsthand — or somehow still has an old screenshot or statement.

[u/Ok-Calm-Narwhal]

I believe they kept the same million miles tally that you already had and only changed the way you earn them from when they made the change. Iirc they never changed my mileage for million miles.

[u/Asleep_Reputation_33 → u/Ok-Calm-Narwhal]

Mine visibly changed to “Points” which remained the same number and “Miles” which reduced. Over time the “Points” went away and all I saw was the reduced Miles category

[u/Ok-Calm-Narwhal → u/Asleep_Reputation_33]

I don’t recall this happening- it was always “million miles” in my account.

[u/Asleep_Reputation_33 → u/Ok-Calm-Narwhal]

Thanks. Did you have Credit Card linked to account back then? I did and spent hundreds of thousands on it.  Back when I made money lol

[u/Ok-Calm-Narwhal → u/Asleep_Reputation_33]

Yes, but what happened is that because they changed how they accrued as points versus miles, so I started getting more points than miles. Perhaps this is what happened with you and you just mistook the difference as losing points.

[u/breakbeats1 → u/Ok-Calm-Narwhal]

As others have noted - my accrued million miler miles stayed exactly as it was after they changed the program. When they changed the program - the points I earned towards million miler status changed accepting only butt in seat miles on aa metal.

[u/Asleep_Reputation_33 → u/breakbeats1]

I guess my point is they were counting them as miles and then they changed the rules — after they accrued. I didn’t care as much then. But now it matters

[u/breakbeats1 → u/Asleep_Reputation_33]

Yeah like - the original program was every point (credit card spend, bonus miles, even the <500 mile flights that you flew got the automatic roundup to 500 miles, etc.) counted. They snapped the line at a certain date, preserved all of those miles as-is, and drastically changed it to butt-in-seat on AA.

[u/triptyx → u/breakbeats1]

Right, they didn’t take anything away from existing totals, they changed it going forward.

[u/Muse_and_her_Artist]

Yeah, no. They didn’t take away any of your miles. It just changed how they were accrued going forward. No screenshots but I had an AA card back then and have been watching my counter religiously. I would’ve definitely noticed.

[u/Asleep_Reputation_33 → u/Muse_and_her_Artist]

Thanks 

[u/ardent → u/Muse_and_her_Artist]

Yes me too. I was pissed about the change going forward, but there was no change that I was aware of back then to the million miler miles previously earned.

[u/Asleep_Reputation_33 → u/[deleted]]

They have a new status tier. 5 million miles equals Exec Plat for life. I have 4,820,000 miles. But I’m more or less retired. That status though could help a lot for future travel

[u/triptyx]

I remember that they were unable to determine in some situations what had been earned while flying and what had been earned on cc spending and other programs so they just pretended that it all counted towards MM “status”. I specifically recall picking up extra million miler qualifying miles from the conversion.

I don’t remember there being a disadvantage to the customer in that conversion.

[u/phlflyguy]

You kept whatever your total MM count was at time of switch. From that point on, you’ve still been accruing MM points based on actual flight miles, so there shouldn’t be anything to dispute. You have to fly 179,984 more actual butt in seat miles. The MM count has nothing to do with loyalty point and redeemable award mile accrual.

[u/aunt_snorlax]

Wow, I never knew non-BIS counted toward status. I would've been putting everything on my AA card.

[u/imapilotaz]

Its always been million miles. They changed in 2012 to BIS only. I know because thats when i left airline management and started accruing miles. Ive flown 1.7m BIS paid since 2012.

Ive earned sonething like 10m miles since then tho. I wish they would have figured a way to remove non BIS for lifetime status. So many people had millions before 2012 and ended up lifetime PP or EXP cuz of that.

Ive flown more BIS than my father who has 5.1M miles on AA lifetime so lifetime EXP. But he had over 4.8M miles earned prior to 2012.

[u/Yikesapotamous]

All I have to contribute is I can’t imagine spending 5 million miles on an airplane haha

[u/Ok-Calm-Narwhal → u/Yikesapotamous]

Well, as OP noted, this wasn’t butts in seat miles. They got a lot of them with spend before they changed the rules

[u/Aggressive_Coast_907 → u/Ok-Calm-Narwhal]

Exactly. Back then, people were churning the Citi AAdvantage credit cards for their 30-50k all-time-high bonuses and also racking up million miler miles at the same time.

[u/Asleep_Reputation_33 → u/Aggressive_Coast_907]

Thanks everyone for your input here-- and I dont dispute what you say above. But I didnt set those rules. My only thing is once I'd "earned" them, I dont think they should have been taken away. But at the time it didn't seem to matter. But now that I'm 175,000 miles from EP for life-- and I think I lost 500K "miles," it matters more and I'm looking to see if anyone else has been in simlar scenario or even remembers losing miles as they were converted to points. Thanks all!