lazecraze53 asked in a recent comment,

“I have been Gold on AAdvantage numerous times, how did you become a lifetime member ? And if you become a lifetime member could you move up to Platinum?”

There are 3 published levels of elite status on AA:

Gold-Requires 25,000 flight miles or 30 flight segments in a calendar year.
Platinum-Requires 50,000 flight miles or 60 flight segments in a calendar year.
Executive Platinum-Requires 100,000 flight miles or 100 flight segments in a calendar year.

Executive Platinum is generally regarded as the best elite published elite status of any domestic carrier, and is generally not attainable by any method except flying 100,000 miles or 100 flight segments.

AA has a few undocumented ways of attaining Gold and Platinum elite status.

One undocumented method of attaining elite status is via AA’s “challenge” by which you can attain Gold or Platinum elite status by flying as little as 5,000 Q-points in 90 days. I wrote about the challenge and Q-points 2 years ago, so there’s no reason to cover that topic again.

Another undocumented method: When you earn 1,000,000 AA miles you earn lifetime Gold elite status. In addition you also get 8 500-mile domestic upgrade stickers if you live in North America, or 4 one-way international upgrades certificates if you live outside North America.

When you earn 2,000,000 AA miles you earn lifetime Platinum elite status. In addition you also get 4 one-way international upgrades regardless of where you live.

AA is the only airline in the world that counts all miles towards million miler/lifetime elite status! Every other airline only counts actual “BIS” flight miles to attain lifetime elite status.

As the lifetime program is completely undocumented, it is liable to change at any time. There have been rumors for some time now that AA wants to go to actual flight miles for lifetime status, but lacks the technology to go back and see how every member actually earned their miles.

For now all miles earned, whether by flying, opening credit cards, or transfers from Starwood, count towards lifetime status. Even if you spend miles, your lifetime counter does not decrease.

You can check your own progress towards lifetime status on AA.com.

It took AA about 3 months to send me my million miler package: