You Can Now Earn American Miles on All Etihad Flights

by Gary Leff

Last week I wrote that American and Etihad were expanding their codeshare relationship to include the Etihad Dallas and San Francisco – Abu Dhabi flights.

At that point you could only earn American miles on Etihad flights to and from North America if booked as an American codeshare. More codesharing meant more flights where you could earn American miles while flying Etihad.

I concluded that despite huffing and puffing about American partners Etihad and Qatar and also Emirates, the American-Etihad partnership didn’t appear to be fraying.

And indeed, it now gets even better. Hat tip to TravelingBetter.com, American has removed the restriction that said you had to fly an American codeshare in order to earn miles flying Etihad between North America and Abu Dhabi.

You can now earn American miles on eligible published fares when flying Etihad, no codeshare required. That’s an improved frequent flyer arrangement.

And it gives me confidence in my continued ability to redeem American miles for Etihad flights in the medium-term.

Flying a mistake fare on Etihad coming up? Credit those miles to American!

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Will this apply retroactively? I mistakenly tried to credit a flight CMB-AUH-JFK to American (x3) in business and never received credit, and its been impossible to get them to credit to ANA or even just to EY. Any word on that? I’m doubtful but figured I’d ask.

  3. JFK-AUH no problem as all the previous earning restrictions ((ORD), (DFW), (LAX), (JFK), (SFO), (IAD),(YYZ)) have been removed.

  4. So mistake fares count as “eligible published fares”? [Nice find!! Thanks]

  6. Hi, so i booked the etihad mistake flight and i already am now in india, and got credited for the first half of my trip to etihad.. Can I transfer those miles to american? And can i get the second half back home credited to american?

  8. This is good news, although am I correct that these remain non-elite qualifying miles?

  10. Dang it. This is about a week too late for me. Now I have several thousand Etihad miles. Guess I need to figure out how to best use those. Or, possibly just buy a wallet or something.

  11. Hi Gary, are AA miles better than Etihad miles, even with some of the 2x/3x Etihad miles promo?

  12. No problem earning on JFK-AUH, all the airport-sepcific limitations language went away with this new change.

  15. Hi Gary, I took a flight from JFK to AUH on Apr 19 and back on Apr 29. Any chance they will credit me for these flights. I called AA and they would not since it needs to be as of May. Any advise?

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