Whats your goal free travel or comfort?

Frequent flyer miles are mostly about getting free trips for most people. However people who fly more than once or twice a year know that the real benefits are in the elite status programs.

What are these? Well they are special programs with real benefits for people who fly a lot. American Airlines have 3 levels of these programs:

• Gold
• Platinum
• Executive Platinum

I will describe these later on in more details. But basically if you have 25k miles in a year you become Gold, 50k Platinum and with 100k the ellusive Executive Platinum.

Why are these programs so good? Well even on the Gold plan you get the following:

• You can check in at the business class counter
• Easy upgrades to business class
• Milage bonuses

There are many other benefits, but these are the most important that make your travel nicer. Have you ever arrived at an airport and had to stand in the check-in line for 45 minutes or more? Well with just gold status, that is history.

In later posts I will go into more details about the different elite status levels and how to "cheat" yourself to Gold status on as little as a cheap trans atlantic flight.