Up until a few months ago, if someone had asked me if I had ever been to or heard of Bonaire, an island in the Dutch Caribbean, I probably would’ve given them a puzzled look and answered, “Bon-where?”
26.12.2024 - 16:13 / thepointsguy.com
Contrary to popular belief, not all of us at TPG benefit from a ton of travel perks ... even perks that we write about daily, like elite status.
When I joined TPG in 2021, I had never had any sort of airline elite status. I did not have a cobranded airline credit card, and I traveled inconsistently — especially compared to my colleagues, some of whom travel weekly. Achieving even entry-level elite status seemed out of reach.
But thanks to winning 30,000 Loyalty Points in a raffle, I did manage to obtain AAdvantage Gold status at the end of 2021; that guaranteed me entry-level American Airlines AAdvantage status through February 2023. This experience also inspired me to take drastic steps to reach AAdvantage Platinum status for the rest of the year (like willingly taking a 66-hour and 15-minute round-trip flight on Oneworld partner Finnair).
I didn't travel much in the first half of 2024, so when I lost that status earlier this year, I wasn't surprised. I was excited to get back to traveling in July for my birthday, but a global IT outage canceled that trip. For the second half of 2024, I traveled consistently from August through December.
Although the unexpected time spent in my home city made any status gains far more unlikely, I truly had no plans to chase status this year for a few reasons.
Here's why.
As an AAdvantage Gold member for one year, I didn't notice much difference between being a member with elite status and one without it. The main difference was the ability to preselect complimentary preferred or Main Cabin Extra seats when checking in for my flight.
The selection was based on availability, and Main Cabin Extra seats were the only seats where I noticed a difference, based on the additional legroom (33 to 39 inches of pitch, depending on the aircraft, versus the 30 to 32 inches in standard economy seats).
If Main Cabin Extra seats weren't available, selection was limited to preferred seats, which are nothing more than what the name implies. They're simply in preferred areas of the plane, such as closer to the front, in a row of two versus three seats, etc. But since they generally do not offer any additional legroom, this isn't enough of a perk for me.
Otherwise, the only other perk I ever received from having AAdvantage Gold status was a regional upgrade on a flight from St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL) to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport (ORD).
There were two differences in this first-class experience. The most notable was a roomier seat (19.9 inches wide with a 37-inch pitch compared to the 34-inch pitch in Main Cabin Extra and the 30-inch pitch in the main cabin) on an Embraer 175 aircraft. The second difference was receiving complimentary snacks.
With AAdvantage
Up until a few months ago, if someone had asked me if I had ever been to or heard of Bonaire, an island in the Dutch Caribbean, I probably would’ve given them a puzzled look and answered, “Bon-where?”
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