The Best Airline Elite Status for 2025

Champagne. Extra legroom. Human decency. These are the perks that come from airline elite status. Whether you’ve enjoyed it in the past or are pursuing it for the first time, you might wonder which airline offers the most valuable elite status program.

Achieving status can cost thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours in flight, so if you’re going after it, you’ll want to try to pick the program that offers the most value. So, who runs the best airline status program? Simply put, American Airlines offers the best overall elite status option for frequent flyers, particularly in the entry- and mid-level elite tiers.

To determine this, we ran a comprehensive analysis of every major U.S. airline’s elite status program and determined an “elite earning rate” for each tier within each program.

This “elite earning rate” is the dollar value of the perks offered by a given elite status tier divided by the cost of achieving this tier. For example, if Nerdy Airlines Gold Status provides $100 in value but costs $1,000 to earn, it has an elite earning rate of 10% ($100 / $1,000). The higher the rate, the more value this elite status offers.

Beyond an overall winner, we’ve broken these ratings into four elite status tiers:

• Entry-level.

• Mid-level.

• High-level.

• Ultra-level.

Every airline has an entry-level tier, though only a few have the highest ultra level. Those dipping their toes in the elite waters should pay special attention to the former, while savvy business travelers should compare the higher tiers.

We’ve provided a detailed explanation of the methodology and assumptions we used to determine these values at the end of this article. For some, the value of a given program will differ significantly from our estimates based on individual travel needs and preferences.

For example, those who rarely check bags or have an airline credit card that offsets bag fees will get little value from elite bag perks. So make sure to check our assumptions before deciding your own airline loyalty.

Winner: American Airlines

American Airlines tops our overall elite status rankings thanks to strong performance across all its elite tiers, especially the lower tiers. You can’t go wrong with earning status in the AAdvantage program.

Delta Airlines, Alaska Airlines and United Airlines take the runner-up spots, and JetBlue drops below the pack. Since much of the value for these airline loyalty programs comes from first class upgrades, budget airlines such as Southwest, Spirit and Frontier are at a natural disadvantage in these ratings, as they lack a first class cabin.

Winner: American Gold

American Airlines Gold status has the highest value of any entry-level status tier. That status is relatively easy to earn for semi-frequent American flyers, especially if you also earn Loyalty Points with an American Airlines credit card.

Note: Southwest does not appear in this comparison, as we consider its entry-level elite status comparable with other airlines’ mid-tier status. See below.

The middle of the pack are close calls, with Delta, United, JetBlue and Alaska all within two percentage points of each other.

Winner: American Platinum

American also takes this category with its mid-tier Platinum status, followed closely by Delta Gold, United Gold and Alaska MVP Gold.

Winner: Delta Platinum

The crowd thins here since Spirit offers two or fewer elite tiers each. Delta Platinum status dominates the high-level elite status tier, which costs less to earn than American Platinum Pro.

Winner: Delta Diamond

Delta Diamond outshines American Executive Platinum status by a good margin for the top ultra-tier value.

Value of each tier

To determine the value of each elite status tier, we considered those perks that carry a clear value, and we omitted luxury benefits (like dedicated phone lines) that do not. Specifically, we considered:

• Bonus miles earned.

• Bag fee offsets.

• Premium seating upgrades.

• First class upgrades.

• Upgrade certificates.

• Fee waivers.

• Other individual program perks with clear value.

The table below explains these benefits as well as the assumptions we made in calculating their value.

Here are the raw estimated values for each program tier:

Cost of earning each tier

Airlines offer different thresholds for achieving each status tier, which can be broken into two categories:

1. Number of miles flown.

2. Other combination of factors, including elite qualifying dollars spent.

For No. 1, we will estimate the cost of achieving each tier as:

Number of miles needed to achieve tier multiplied by the median cost of flown mile (12 cents, per a separate analysis we conducted). For example, Hawaiian requires 20,000 flown miles for Gold status, so the cost of achieving this tier is 20,000 x $0.12 = $2,400.

For No. 2, we will estimate the cost of achieving each tier as:

Number of elite qualifying dollars divided by the fare-to-cost ratio. The fare-to-cost ratio is a percentage value that represents the average “base fare” to “total cost” of airfare (81% per our separate analysis). For example, AAdvantage Gold status requires $3,000 EQDs, so the cost of achieving this tier is $3,000 / $0.81 = $3,614.

If an airline requires a combination of Nos. 1 and 2, we used No. 2 as the cost of earning because this is usually more difficult to achieve. In other words, it's rare to hit a minimum spending requirement without hitting the mileage requirement.

Here is the estimated cost to earn each status tier: