Should I pursue elite status with Alaska or American Airlines? (On Nick’s mind)

Loyalty programs exist at least in part to encourage us to make irrational decisions. On the surface, it is pretty irrational for me to consider pursuing airline elite status at all. Setting that fact aside, I find myself in position to earn elite status with either Alaska Airlines or American Airlines and I find myself at a crossroads, needing to decide which to prioritize in 2025. I’m hoping that writing this post will help me decide.

I don’t really need elite status

At the outset, I want to acknowledge that the hunt for airline elite status is, in my opinion, mostly overrated. That is particularly true for those of us who primarily travel on premium cabin international award tickets. Many of the core benefits of elite status — things like free checked bags, priority check-in/boarding, and partner lounge access — automatically come with an international business class award ticket. I would argue that airline elite status is primarily useful for those who travel in economy class very regularly, particularly domestically within the US. That’s not really my situation.

So why would I bother with elite status?

First of all, I write about loyalty programs and credit card benefits. It is often helpful to have direct experience with as many aspects of hotel and airline loyalty programs and credit cards as possible, both to be able to share my experience and to write about these things in a more informed capacity (and to be able to answer questions, etc). I therefore do some things that I probably wouldn’t do were this not my job.

However, there is also some amount of functional aspect at play. While I enjoy premium cabins when traveling internationally, my family has long been Southwest Airlines loyalists. We’ve long had a Companion Pass in our household and have flown Southwest thanks to the free checked bags, family boarding after Group A that ensures we always get the seats we want, and generally good customer service / a predictable experience. With many of those things expected to change for the worse in 2025 and beyond, I anticipate that there may be more situations where we consider flying on other airlines domestically. That typically comes down to a choice between American Airlines or United Airlines, and American is often the cheaper of the two for us. We also usually visit Europe once or twice a year and typically only fly economy class within Europe, where benefits on carriers like Finnair, Iberia, and British Airways can come in handy. Having oneworld elite status might be useful. I wouldn’t generally recommend chasing elite status if you think it might come in handy, but that’s my story.

Which elite status benefits matter to me?

There are five main elite status benefits that matter most to me:

• Free checked baggage allowance (my family almost always checks a bag)
• Priority check-in (since we almost always check a bag, we almost always need to stand in a line waiting to check it)
• Lounge access (we usually have this when traveling long-haul internationally, but we’ll have intra-European economy class travel on Finnair this year and probably a few instances where access to lounges could be useful)
• Extra legroom seating. This matters when flying American Airlines domestically. I’ve gotten used to being able to choose an exit row (when I’m not traveling with my kids) and would love to still be able to get that.
• Priority security. This is the least important to me of the bunch. We have CLEAR and even before we had CLEAR, we typically made it through in plenty of time. However, it would be nice to have Priority Security in some places where CLEAR isn’t an option.

Most of these benefits would come with oneworld Sapphire status, which would equate to Alaska MVP Gold status or American Airlines Platinum status.

My Alaska standing and options

I currently have no elite status with Alaska Mileage Plan. However, I’ve been getting more and more excited about using Mileage Plan miles as of late as I’ve found a number of situations where Alaska miles have been perfect for trips we’re planning.

New in 2025, partner award flights booked with Alaska Mileage Plan miles earn elite-qualifying miles (at a rate of 1 elite-qualifying mile per mile flown). So far this year, we’re booked to fly about 15,500 miles on Alaska award tickets. I’m eyeing Alaska miles to fill a couple of gaps in other tips this year and I think there’s a pretty good chance that we’ll end up with at least another 4,500 miles flown on Alaska award tickets this year. That would get my entire family of four to Alaska MVP status / oneworld Ruby status just from award tickets. This would get us priority check-in when flying a oneworld carrier and “Preferred/pre-reserved seating”, but no checked baggage allowance on partner flights and no lounge access. We would get Main Cabin Extra on American Airlines, but only at check-in.

However, I really want Alaska MVP Gold status and its oneworld Sapphire benefits (including Main Cabin Extra seating at the time of booking on American and an extra checked bag & lounge access when flying economy class with Finnair later this year). Earning Alaska MVP Gold status would require earning a total of 40,000 elite-qualifying miles. Anyone in my family wanting MVP Gold status would need to earn an additional 20,000 elite-qualifying miles over what we already expect in order to earn MVP Gold / oneworld Sapphire status through Alaska.

How I can earn oneworld Sapphire status with Alaska

I would need to earn an additional 20,000 elite-qualifying miles in order to end up with oneworld Sapphire status.

New this year, I can earn 1 elite qualifying mile for every $3 spent on an Alaska credit card or 1 elite qualifying mile for every 3 miles earned though non-airline partners like Alaska Mileage Plan Shopping / Dining, 1800Flowers, and more. You can view many of those options here. Essentially, I could earn 20,000 elite-qualifying miles with $60,000 in purchases on an Alaska credit card or 60K miles earned through non-flight partners like the shopping portal. My wife has the Alaska business card and given recent reselling activity, we could meet the credit card spend threshold (or we could do a combination of portal offers and credit card spend).

We could also earn some qualifying miles from flying. As a Bank of America Alaska Airlines business credit card holder, my wife has an Alaska Companion Certificate. We could probably plan a fun routing to make good use of a Companion Certificate and earn a nice chunk of miles depending on how complex the trip becomes. In the month of August, I’ve been tempted to find some cool educational camps for kids and travel to enroll my kids in camps in a couple of different places where they can have some fun and learn. I could see making use of an Alaska companion certificate for that. I don’t think we’ll earn 20K from flight activity, but we might earn some from flying, which would reduce the amount we’d need to earn from spend/portal offers.

While my wife has the Alaska business card to spend toward status, I do not. I’ve got a Bank of America Business Customized Cash card that I don’t really need and I have tried calling to request a product change to an Alaska card, but thus far I’ve been told that it isn’t possible. Maybe I’ll apply for an Alaska card for myself if I decide to chase status.

Keep in mind that if we used an Alaska card to spend toward status, we would be accepting suboptimal return on spend. Our best comparison point now is a 2% cash back card. Based on our Reasonable Redemption Values, Alaska miles are worth about 1.5c per mile, so we’ll call the net “loss” when spending on an Alaska card about 0.5%. That means that $60K in purchases on an Alaska card yields about $300 less in value than spending on a 2% cash back card. Obviously the true difference here varies tremendously. Cash back is far more flexible, yet miles can be used for significantly outsized value. Still, it wouldn’t be an expensive proposition to spend toward status (assuming I could still meet minimum spend requirements on other cards I want to open, and I can).

My American standing and options

At the time of writing, I have American Airlines Platinum status, but only for a few more days as my status is scheduled to end on 3/31/25.

Part of what pushed me to consider status is the fact that I recently booked travel on American for next month. I was able to select exit row seating thanks to my status at the time of booking, but I expect we probably won’t get airport benefits like priority check-in since I will no longer have status. I actually have to select my 15K Loyalty Point Reward still from hitting 15K LPs for the previous qualification year and one of the options is priority privileges (like priority check-in and Group 4 boarding) for one trip. I’d like to have priority check-in for the return leg, which will be departing a major airport. In this case, I can select and apply that benefit. However, for a future trip, status might be nice.

I currently have just over 10,000 Loyalty Points that I’ve earned this qualification year (from credit card spend) with about 3,000 more on the way soon. I’ll be about 62,000 miles short of the 75K necessary for Platinum / oneworld Sapphire status.

How I could earn oneworld Sapphire status with American

My main two means of achieving that additional 62,000 Loyalty Points would be via credit card spend (on my Aviator Silver card) or via the AAdvantage eShopping portal.

My Aviator Silver card comes with a 5K Loyalty Point status boost at $25K, $40K, and $50K in purchases. I’ve already put $10K in purchases on the card this qualification year. If I spend an additional $47K on my card, I’ll trigger all three of those bonuses and end up with a total of 62,000 Loyalty Points (47K from spend + 15K from the thee big spend bonuses. That would get me to Platinum / oneworld Sapphire status.

I could therefore earn my desired oneworld Sapphire status via American Airlines with less credit card spend. However, if I pepper in some shopping portal activity, it may affect how many of those 5K boosts I get from card spending.

Our Reasonable Redemption Value for American Airlines miles is 1.4c per mile, making the return around 0.6% lower than a 2% cash back card. Spending $47K on an AA card would “cost” me around $282 in value — a bit less than the “cost” of spending toward Alaska elite status, but a pretty thin margin.

A oneworld Sapphire alternative: status for a day from Hyatt

When I previously pondered chasing American Airlines elite status, a number of readers pointed out that if I would only need status a couple of times per year, I could skip trying to earn it with American and instead redeem World of Hyatt points for American Airlines status for a day.

New in 2025, it is possible for Hyatt Explorists or Globalists to redeem World of Hyatt points to enjoy American Airlines status for a day. You can read more here, but the gist of it is that as a Hyatt Globalist, I can redeem points for a day of AA status as follows:

• 5K Hyatt points = American Airlines Gold (oneworld Ruby) status for a day
• 8K Hyatt points = American Airlines Platinum status for a day
• 12K Hyatt points = American Airlines Platinum Pro status for a day

Based on our reasonable redemption values, the Hyatt points above are worth $85, $136, or $204.

If I only anticipated needing status one or two times, it would probably make more sense to redeem World of Hyatt points.

However, one of my use cases for status is when flying Finnair economy class in Europe later this year. We’ll be flying Finnair twice and the extra checked baggage allowance and lounge access in Helsinki could come in handy. However, the AA status for a day does not provide oneworld benefits.

Still, I think an argument can be made that “buying” status for a day through Hyatt probably makes more sense if you remove my Finnair travel from the equation. I’m not sure how many times I’ll travel and need status, but most of the times I do will likely be when traveling domestically on American. I could simply “buy” status with Hyatt points when traveling domestically. If I end up with more domestic economy AA trips, I could re-evaluate and spend toward status.

What will I do?

I had hoped that writing this post would help me decide which was the path of least resistance, but it looks like like spending my way toward either Alaska or American status would be roughly similar given my already-planned Alaska award travel. For some reason, I’m more tempted by the idea of earning Alaska elite status, though mostly because I like the idea of being able to earn toward status with award tickets. I rarely fly Alaska, so Alaska-specific benefits don’t matter to me.

Without having run the numbers out in my head, I was surprised to find that spending toward AA status would actually “cost” me less in the sense of lost value for credit card spend. The Loyalty Point boosts on the Aviator Silver card help to reduce the gap toward status. When you take the additional value of the companion certificate earned at $20K in spend, it further reduces the “cost” of spending on the Aviator Silver card.

Mathematically, it probably makes more sense for me to spend toward American Airlines Platinum status if I am to chase oneworld Sapphire status. I think my main hesitation is that I am currently more excited about the prospect of earning Alaska miles. That’s because there are a number of situations where Alaska miles are advantageous. I will likely be more excited yet when Alaska begins allowing mixed partner itineraries, particularly given the free stopover on a one-way award ticket. I feel like I could get more outsized value out of 60K Alaska miles than I could from 57K American Airlines miles. On the other hand, AA miles certainly are handy.

I should probably go for American Airlines elite status if I’m to chase status at all. It’s still a tall order, but I’d be able to spend less and enjoy the same oneworld benefits. I’ll naturally earn Alaska MVP status this year through award tickets, but despite that it still seems like spending toward American Airlines Platinum status probably makes more sense. But I’d be happy for a reader to talk me into Alaska :-).

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