As of Jan. 1, 2022, American Airlines AAdvantage members earn AAdvantage elite status based on "Loyalty Points" — rather than needing to meet Elite Qualifying Dollar, Elite Qualifying Mile and Elite Qualifying Segment thresholds.

The promise of the Loyalty Points program is simplicity. When announcing the program, American Airlines trumpeted: "The message is simple: Earn AAdvantage miles, earn status."

However, in practice, the new American Airlines Loyalty Points program is anything but simple. The new program is filled with carve-outs, exclusions and even some exceptions to exclusions.

So, let's dive into American Airlines Loyalty Points, including the complicated picture of how you can and can't earn them.

How many Loyalty Points do you need for status?

In the new American Airlines elite status system, the only metric you need to track is Loyalty Points. American Airlines offers two types of rewards for earning Loyalty Points: AAdvantage elite status and Loyalty Point Rewards (formerly known as Loyalty Choice Rewards).

American has increased the number of Loyalty Points needed to earn its Gold tier of elite status by 33% for 2023.

The AAdvantage elite program requires:

40,000 Loyalty Points for AAdvantage Gold.

75,000 Loyalty Points for AAdvantage Platinum.

125,000 Loyalty Points for AAdvantage Platinum Pro.

200,000 Loyalty Points for AAdvantage Executive Platinum.

In 2023, American also removed the need to fly qualifying segments in order to unlock Loyalty Point Rewards. Now, you only need to earn 15,000 Loyalty Points to unlock your first reward choice, and you'll continue to earn benefits and rewards at several levels up to 5,000,000 Loyalty Points.

Loyalty Point Reward benefits and choices at different levels include priority privileges, systemwide upgrades and Admirals Club one-day access passes.

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How earning Loyalty Points works

Say you earn AAdvantage miles through the following activities in 2023:

70,000 AAdvantage miles from a credit card sign-up bonus.

50,000 AAdvantage miles through savings with Bask Bank.

50,000 AAdvantage miles for converting 120,000 Marriott Bonvoy points.

25,000 AAdvantage miles for booking an AAVacations package.

5,000 AAdvantage miles for donating $500 to Stand Up to Cancer.

That's a total of 200,000 miles.

Top-tier AAdvantage Executive Platinum elite status only requires 200,000 Loyalty Points. So, based on the above earnings, you should start enjoying all of the perks of top-tier status, right?

Unfortunately, no.

Despite earning 200,000 AAdvantage miles, you would have earned just 1,000 Loyalty Points from all of this mileage-generating activity. These 1,000 Loyalty Points were earned due to the base miles collected for booking an AAVacations package.

Sadly, the rest of your miles-earning activities are wholly disqualified from earning Loyalty Points. In most cases, you’ll only get Loyalty Points for base miles earned, with some exceptions.