It is vital to become familiar with the ins and outs of American Airlines’ frequent flyer program, known as AAdvantage, if you are a fan of the airline or are considering applying for a credit card with the company.
What Does Membership in American Airlines’ AAdvantage Program Mean?
AAdvantage, the frequent flyer club offered by American Airlines, rewards members with points. Each dollar spent on airfare by AAdvantage members earns them one mile, which may then be exchanged for a range of travel-related benefits, like as free flights and accommodations.
One of the largest commercial airlines in the world is American Airlines. A total of 350 destinations in 50 different countries are served by more than 6,700 daily flights operated by American Eagle, its regional partner airline.
One of the first airline loyalty schemes ever developed, AAdvantage was introduced by American Airlines on May 1, 1981.
Charles Lindbergh’s maiden flight for American Airlines in 1926 is considered the beginning of the airline’s history. Instead of passengers, this airplane carried mail for the United States.
The AAdvantage Programme Offered by American Airlines: How Do You Join?
Online registration, using the American Airlines mobile application, or obtaining an American Airlines-branded credit card are all free ways to join the AAdvantage program. American Airlines will give you a membership number, often known as your AAdvantage number, once the enrolling procedure is complete. Any upcoming reservations for flights and other purchases with American Airlines must mention this number.
What Does “Hubs” Mean in the Context of American Airlines?
American Airlines’ corporate headquarters are not far from Dallas/Fort Worth International Terminal (DFW), the country’s main hub. American Airlines considers nine other airports to be hubs in the United States.
Pros
precious airline miles
There are numerous ways to accumulate more miles.
many additional airlines as partners
Cons
The publically available award charts do not always reflect the real award flight costs.
Hotel partners aren’t eligible to receive mileage transfers, contrary to the United MileagePlus program.
How to Use American Airlines AAdvantage Miles to Earn Money
You have a range of options available to you once you sign up for American Airlines’ frequent flyer club in order to accrue miles.
travel on American Airlines.
You can earn AAdvantage points by taking eligible flights in these areas that are run by American Airlines or American Eagle:
United States of America, Asia
Canada
Caribbean
Americas, both North and South
Europe
Mexico
Latin American countries
South Pacific Region
Either you are flying on a route which awards miles, or you have purchased your flight using a qualified booking code (they are shown in the award charts at the American Airlines website). For the flight to be qualified, both of these conditions have to be satisfied. Certain flights, including those with infants and companions, some tickets bought through a travel company, and prize tickets, do not count toward accumulating miles flown.
The basic tariff and any additional fees levied by the transport company for things like choosing a seat or checked-bag fees are the main factors used to determine how many miles you will accrue for each trip. When you pay taxes or other government-required fees, you won’t accrue miles.
If you are an active participant of the basic AAdvantage program, you will receive 5 miles for every $1 paid on the base price of a booked flight. You will accrue more miles if you’re in distinguished status in the AAdvantage program. (There shall be more below about this.)
Up to 75,000 AAdvantage miles might be earned each time you fly with American Airlines.
Use one of Our Partner Airlines to travel. like Qantas or British Airways
Flying on one of more than 20 partner airlines—many of which are also participants of the global Oneworld airline alliance—will earn you AAdvantage points. One of the carriers is American carriers.
When booking flights on a partner airline to earn AAdvantage miles, you have two options: either contact the airline directly and give them your AAdvantage number at the time of purchase, or sign in to your AAdvantage account with the American Airlines website while booking a collaborate flight through the booking portal.
For each flight you take on a partner airline, how many points will you receive? Short answer: It varies.
Depending on a proportion of the total distance traveled and the pricing class of your ticket, you will typically accrue AAdvantage points on flights operated by partner airlines. These elements are taken into account when calculating the number of miles you will earn (for example, first or premium economy).
You’ll often accrue less miles when booking economy tickets with a partner airline than you would on an American Airlines journey. For example, British Airways’ majority of basic fare codes only allow you to accrue miles for 25 or 50% of the base mileage. You will receive more points when you book superior tickets that are eligible for incentives.
On some partner flights, it’s likely that you won’t be able to accrue AAdvantage points; however, this depends on the route, the destination, and which carrier affiliate is operating the partner flight. For example, when traveling on Hawaiian Airlines flights operated under the Ohana brand, you cannot accrue AAdvantage points.
Most of American Airlines’ partner airlines’ earning charts are accessible online through American Airlines, including those that aren’t a member of the Oneworld alliance.
Utilize the American Airlines credit cards.
When you apply for a credit card bearing the American Airlines logo, you can accrue miles for a variety of costs, even those unrelated to travel, and you can accrue even more points for purchases made directly via American Airlines. Citi offers a few of these cards, including:
When using the AAdvantage MileUp Mastercard for groceries and other qualified purchases, the American Airlines firm earns two miles for each dollar spent. For every $1 spent on anything else, you get one mile.
When you use the AAdvantage Platinum Select World Elite Mastercard to make eligible purchases from American Airlines, petrol stations, and restaurants, you will accrue two miles for every dollar spent. Additionally, for every dollar spent on anything else, you receive one mile.
With the Citi AAdvantage Executive World Elite Mastercard, earn 2 miles for every dollar spent on eligible purchases made with American Airlines and 1 mile for every dollar spent on all other purchases.
Along with gaining one mile for each dollar spent on other purchases done with your CitiBusiness AAdvantage Platinum Select Mastercard, you can earn a total of two miles for every dollars spent on qualified purchases made with American Airlines, telecommunications, cable, and satellite suppliers, car rentals, and gas station purchases.
Customers can also choose from a variety of AAdvantage credit cards offered by Barclays, such as the following:
The AAdvantage Aviator Red World Elite Mastercard offers two miles for every dollar spent on qualified American Airlines purchases and one mile for every dollar spent on all other purchases.
These aircraft credit cards offer a substantial number of bonus miles to new customers who are able to meet the minimum spending requirement. Getting one of these cards could be very helpful if you want to quickly raise the amount of miles you have in your account.
The only other way to gain access to popular American Airlines loyalty benefits (including early board and free checked bags) is to achieve elite status, but doing so necessitates first making a sizable financial commitment to the airline. This is the only alternative if you don’t have a credit card with the American Airlines logo. If additional airline benefits appeal to you, you might want to think about getting a credit card bearing the airline’s logo.
Stay at any participating hotel, such as a Hyatt, Marriott, or other lodging
By submitting your AAdvantage number or choosing American Airlines as the airline of your choice for earning rewards when you book directly with a facility that is associated with one of several hotel chains, you may receive rewards:
Hyatt-Managed Hotels and Resorts
InterContinental lodgings, including Holiday Inn
Hotels Marriott Bonvoy
Wyndham-run lodging facilities
Any unused hotel points you have in your World of Hyatt, Marriott Bonvoy, IHG Rewards Club, or Wyndham Rewards account can be converted into AAdvantage miles. This can be a good choice for you to take into account if you’re trying to fast accumulate miles in preparation for an upcoming vacation. The necessary information can be obtained on the American Airlines website because the conversion rates utilized by the various hotel programs vary.
Additional Techniques for Accumulating AAdvantage Miles
Earn one mile for each dollar spent on the majority of reservations made through an airline’s dedicated cruise booking platform or by phoning a toll-free number. Choose from 28 partners to take a cruise, including Royal Caribbean, Disney Cruise Line, or one of the others.
You will earn a discount on your rental along with at least 500 miles for each reservation if you book with Avis, Budget, or one of the other partnering car rental companies.
Make your travel arrangements with American Airlines and reserve a vacation package: By doing so, you can accrue miles, and some of these packages provide special advantages for particular areas.
Join the AAdvantage Dining Program to take advantage of the opportunity to earn miles by connecting your debit and credit cards, then using both of them at participating restaurants, bars, and clubs.
If you shop through the American Airlines shopping site and sign in with your AAdvantage account credentials, you may get up to 30 miles for every dollar paid at one of the more than 950 partner businesses.
Keep a close eye on the website that includes American’s bonus offers because you can accumulate bonus miles by doing a range of things like making travel or lodging reservations, renting a car, shopping, and more.
American Airlines offers the ability to buy AAdvantage points: When you buy a sizable amount of miles at once, you’ll typically be qualified for benefits like bonus miles and price breaks. It is typically not worth the money to buy miles unless you just require a few more to pass your award barrier.
Have Your American Airlines AAdvantage Miles Ever Been Refused to Be Redeemed?
Your AAdvantage miles will never expire as long as you maintain a regular login to your account. The miles in your account won’t expire if you use them to make a purchase or exchange them a minimum of once every 18 months.
If your miles do expire, you can choose to reactivate as many as 500,000 of them once every 18 months for a charge. Depending on how many kilometers you want, the cost of activation will vary.
How to Use Your American Airlines AAdvantage Miles
There are a few other ways to redeem AAdvantage points, but you guessed it—further flight travel—is their most valued application.
Make flight reservations with American Airlines
The most lucrative frequent flyer programme offered by any major U.S. airline, AAdvantage points are worth approximately 2.04 cents when used to purchase award travel, according to analysis by The Balance. You may be able to get more mileage out of your miles if you book foreign flights in addition to local ones with them.
American Airlines is one among the few U.S. airlines that publishes its reward charts online; this is not a common practice for most U.S. carriers. The Balance’s research indicates that quoted flight fares are, however, categorized differently from the award travel kinds shown on the charts (MileSAAver and AAnytime), and therefore frequently do not show up in flight search results. In some cases, the amount of miles needed to reserve a flight is different from what is shown in the reward charts.
American Airlines claims that due to an increase in web special offers and other pricing factors, such as customer demand for tickets during peak travel times, award flight rates have recently grown more erratic. They can change often, as evidenced by the fact that they can. The airline claims that award flights are more likely to be given today as a web special or based on seat class than either a MileSAAver or an AAnytime ticket. Additionally, award flights are more frequently promoted as web specials.
Bookings Can Be Made With One Of Our Affiliate Airlines
AAdvantage miles can be used on aa.com to purchase award tickets with one of American Airlines’ 19 partner airlines. You can also use your AAdvantage miles to make phone reservations for award flights with two additional partners of American Airlines.
With Oneworld airlines and other partners, the place of departure and arrival of the flight, as well as the type of seat class (main cabin, high economy, business/first, or first), are what decide the cost and availability of award flights.
You can find published reward charts for the company’s partner airlines that are remarkably similar to the American Airlines reward system on the American Airlines website. The charts can be helpful for you to reference if you want to obtain a general idea of how much a ticket might cost you depending on your travel plans or if you are interested in understanding what award tickets will be available at different times of the year. To view the latest and most recent flight information available, we still strongly advise completing single flight searches on the American Airlines ticket page.
Taxes and fees, with an absolute minimum of $5.60 per person and per award, are applied to each and every partner award ticket. The same rules also apply to flights booked as rewards on American Airlines.
Buy Upgraded Tickets
If there are seats open on the higher level, you can use your AAdvantage miles to pay for an upgrade your ticket when flying on American Airlines, British Airways, or Iberia. For instance, you can use miles to go from premium economy to business class. Details may be found on the partner upgrading page.
Opportunities to Use Your American Airlines AAdvantage Miles in Additional Ways
You can also spend your AAdvantage bonus points on the things listed below, but we don’t advise it unless you have to (for instance, if your miles are about to expire or you’re closing a credit card account) or if the value of each point exceeds what you’d get from booking an award flight.
American Airlines offers membership to the Admirals Club airport lounge.
Make reservations for a hotel or a rental vehicle.
packages for vacations
purchasing a newspaper subscription
contributions to benevolent causes
AAdvantage miles cannot be exchanged for cash back or any other kind of award that may be turned into cash, including credits that are credited to your American Airlines credit card account.
The AAdvantage Elite Status of American Airlines
How Does One Obtain Elite Status?
The quickest way to reach elite status in the AAdvantage program is to accrue a sizable amount of miles on American Airlines and other Oneworld carriers.
The Benefits of Enjoying Elite Status
If you invest the time and energy necessary to reach elite status in the AAdvantage program, you are going to be rewarded with accelerated check-in, security screening, and boarding, as well as a discount on an Admirals Club subscription if you want to sign up for one.
Additionally, as you advance through the status levels, the number of miles you receive on flight purchases (excluding taxes and fees) will increase:
The Final Verdict
Generally speaking, American Airlines’ AAdvantage program offers its devoted clients a variety of chances to accumulate miles that are highly valuable. You can earn miles on non-travel related purchases made every day if you apply for a credit card that is partnered with an airline. You will also have access to airline benefits that are often only offered to customers who have attained elite status. Without a debit or credit card, reaching an elite status necessitates spending a sizable sum of money, traveling extensively, or both. It is better to use your AAdvantage miles to reserve international flights if you would like to get the greatest value out of each one when it comes to the opportunity to redeem them.
