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How to Earn American Airlines Status
AA was the first among the big three to introduce the concept of the “Loyalty Point,” a metric that sought to unify and simplify the status-earning process. This change allowed AAdvantage members to earn status not only by flying with American or its partner airlines but also through everyday activities like using an AAdvantage credit card or spending with AAdvantage partners.
AA status is based on a slightly shifted status qualifying year (March 1 to the last day of February of the following year). Status is then valid through March 31 of the year.
Advantage members earn 1 Loyalty Point for most cases where they earn redeemable AA miles. That is to say, if you earn 1 AA mile, you should earn 1 Loyalty Point. This stands out because none of the other airline shopping portals allow users to earn status qualifying points while American allows you to earn on AA Dining, Simply Miles, and more. Some examples of situations where you might not earn Loyalty Points despite earning redeemable AA miles are:
- Bonus miles: some AA promotions advertise “bonus miles.” These miles will not earn you Loyalty Points. A common example is in AA’s shopping portal, which sometimes offers additional bonus miles for meeting a certain spending threshold.
- Bask bank miles earned do not count as Loyalty Points
- Miles earned from sign-up offers do not count as Loyalty Points
- Additional miles from bonused credit card spending categories do not earn additional Loyalty Points. That is to say, you earn one Loyalty Point for every eligible dollar spent on the card.
Based on this chart, you could (in theory) earn AA’s top-tier Executive Platinum status with $200,000 of eligible credit card spend. Additionally, AA awards additional Loyalty Points based on your status (for paid flights):
- No status/base: 5 miles per dollar
- Gold: 7 miles per dollar
- Platinum: 8 miles per dollar
- Platinum Pro: 9 miles per dollar
- Executive Platinum: 11 miles per dollar
This means that you earn Loyalty Points more rapidly as you progress through the status ladder.
How to Earn United Airlines Status
Since AA and Delta’s changes, United Airlines stands out as the program with the most convoluted way of earning status. There are two important metrics with United Airlines:
- Premier Qualifying Points (PQP): Based on the base fare and carrier-imposed surcharge of flight purchases, along with seating purchases and paid upgrades. This is essentially a metric tracking how much $ you spend directly on United Airlines and its partners. You can earn PQP on award tickets and on flights operated by a Star Alliance member (the calculations here get a little weird, but there can be some sweet spots)
- Premier Qualifying Flights (PQF): Based on the number of flight segments flown on United or partner airlines. You must fly at least 4 segments on United or United Express to qualify through this metric.
Right now, you can get status either purely through PQP or a combination of PQPs and PQFs. For the sake of this comparison, we will solely focus on earning status via PQPs, as it makes our comparisons more 1:1 in nature.
PQPs are much more difficult to earn on United in comparison to AA. While AA awards Loyalty Points for spending across a ton of categories, PQPs are only awarded when flying and with credit card spend. However, United cardholders can only earn 500 PQPs for every $12,000 in eligible card spend—that’s not very good when compared to AA or Delta. Furthermore, there are limitations to how many PQPs can be earned on each United card:
Up to 1,000 PQP in a calendar year
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Up to 6,000 PQP in a calendar year
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Up to 10,000 PQP in a calendar year
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To be very clear: even by maxing out and putting $192,000 spend on the United Club Infinite Card only puts you at United Silver Status (8,000 PQPs). Likewise, putting $200,000 spend on any AA card will get you AA’s top-tier elite status. Consequently, this forces much of your United status progress to come from flying rather than credit cards and makes it clear that United doesn’t care much about heavy credit card spenders.
How to Earn Delta Airlines Status
Starting in 2024, Delta will be transitioning to one, simple metric to earn status: Medallion Qualifying Dollars (MQDs). Traditionally, MQDs were only obtainable by flying on Delta/partner flights, but Delta has taken much inspiration from AA to reshape its program.
MQDs can now be earned via:
- Delta & Partner Flights: Earn $1 MQD per $1 spent on the ticket price for a Delta-marketed flight operated by Delta or by one of our partner airlines.
- Delta SkyMiles® AMEX Cards: Earn $1 MQD for each $20 of purchases on your Delta SkyMiles Platinum (personal or business) or $1 MQD for each $10 of purchases on your Delta SkyMiles Reserve cards (personal or business)
- Delta Vacations: Earn $1 MQD per $1 spent on your vacation experience
Cardholders also receive an additional “MQD Headstart” of 2,500 MQD for each personal or business Delta SkyMiles Platinum/Reserve card they own. This is huge—by having 2 Delta AMEX cards, you're already halfway through to Gold Medallion status. In theory, you could own all 4 and immediately jump to Delta Gold, but that would cost you about $1,600 in annual fees.
Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card
Earn $1 MQD When You Spend $20
Receive 2,500 MQD Headstart annually
Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card
Earn $1 MQD When You Spend $10
Receive 2,500 MQD Headstart annually
Earning status is now based on the following, simplified thresholds:
This makes earning status on Delta very straightforward. For example, spending $255,000 on your Delta SkyMiles Reserve card will grant you Delta Diamond Medallion status (after the MQD Headstart). Likewise, spending $28,000 directly on Delta flights (before taxes & other fees) will directly earn you Diamond status.
How Much Does It Cost To Earn Status With Credit Cards?
Let’s say you hypothetically wanted to earn status only using a credit card. Which airline makes it easiest to earn status through this method?
A few notes on this analysis:
- Delta SkyMiles® Reserve American Express Card earn 1 MQD / $10; Delta SkyMiles® Platinum American Express Card earns 1 MQD / $20 of eligible spend. This analysis assumes you have the SkyMiles Reserve card.
- United credit cards limit the total number of PQP you can earn in a calendar year. For example, the United Club Infinite Card only lets you earn up to 8,000 PQP in a calendar year
- This assumes that you only have 1 Delta card, which provides the 2,500 MQD headstart
From this table, you can see that credit card spend overall is much more fruitful with AA than any of the other airlines, whereas United seems to deprioritize credit card spend altogether. To make things worse for UA, since each of its cards caps your PQP earnings, you’d have to have multiple United cards just to get anywhere close to Delta or AA. With Delta’ top tier SkyMiles Reserve credit card, you'll be able to get Silver status faster than any other option, but will need to ramp things up later on.
How Much Does It Cost To Earn Status By Flying?
Delta and United make it very easy to determine how many status qualifying points you earn for spending on their flights: $1 is equal to 1 PQP/MQM. Unfortunately, American doesn’t make it so simple. AA awards additional Loyalty Points based on your status (as seen above), meaning the higher your status, the more rapidly you gain redeemable and elite miles (Loyalty Points).
A key simplification in this American Airlines analysis is you start earning at a higher mileage rate the moment you hit the next level. This means that when you hit Level 2 (AA Platinum), every dollar you spend starts earning 8 miles per dollar versus 7 as gold. In actuality, you may have spend that creeps forward into the next level before you start earning at the increased rate.
Starting afresh (as in, you have no statuses whatsoever), United has the lowest thresholds to obtain status if we’re considering spend purely on the airline itself. Delta is 2nd cheapest, all the way up until top tier status, where AA suddenly becomes slightly cheaper.
However, if we consider status renewal, the numbers start to shift around a bit. American Airlines awards more loyalty points at higher status tiers, making it easier to renew status the following year.
This makes American’s appeal even stronger, as outside of Level 1, AA becomes significantly cheaper than all the other airlines in the status race. In fact, for those renewing AA Executive Platinum vs acquiring Delta Diamond, AA costs nearly half that of Delta to pursue on a pure flying basis.
Overall, it's clear that American provides the cheapest path to renewing status through paid flights. The one caveat is that United’s required PQP tiers drop a bit if you consider the ability to earn status through a mix of PQF and PQPs. However, for United 1K, that requires 54 PQFs—which may prove to be a larger hurdle than plausible.
Advanced: What If I Wanted To Mix Both Types of Spending and Minimize My Total Spend? ▼
Conclusions & Final Thoughts
Each of the big three present unique approaches to earning status. American Airlines stands out for its flexibility and generosity in status earning through credit card spending, making it an attractive choice for those who frequently use their AAdvantage cards. United Airlines emphasizes flight-based earnings, catering more to traditional flyers with a focus on spending on flights and airline-specific activities. Delta Airlines, with its transition to a simpler Medallion Qualifying Dollars system, offers a path more strongly appealing to both frequent flyers and credit card users.
Deciding which airline status to pursue is also a function of determining which best services your airport and the routes you generally fly. Since each of the big three are part of a different international alliance, it is incredibly important to think through your individual factors thoroughly before pursuing status on any one of the airlines.
