The premium co-branded American Airlines Mastercard that can earn elite qualifying miles, offers no foreign currency transaction fees, and comes bundled with lounge access, carries a $450 annual fee.
Most often I’ve seen the card offered with 25,000 miles as a signup bonus.
But now there’s a 50,000 mile signup bonus offer for the card which requires $5000 spending within 3 months.
It’s a lot of money for that annual fee but it’s also a lot of miles, and amounts to purchasing miles at less than a penny apiece (for the first year only).
If you are shut out from other Citi cards you might want, such as AAdvantage Visa and the Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve Card (the latter offers referral credit to me) then this is probably worth considering.
It’s a no-brainer if you buy lounge access from American, though I get mine from my American Express Platinum card (here’s the Mercedes-Benz version which carries the best available signup bonus) and also via my British Airways Gold status (I was comped based on being a british midland Gold member when BA acquired that airline).
And there’s a strong case to be made for the card if you are striving for American Airlines status. It requires a whopping $40,000 in spend to earn 10,000 elite qualifying miles, but that can be a better strategy than actually flying those 10,000 miles and of course you save both your time and the cost of the tickets in doing so.
Looking at my own travels I’ll likely requalify for American’s Executive Platinum status. But I’m monitoring that and hope that this offer is still available should I need the status miles.
(HT: Million Mile Secrets)
FYI I keep getting errors when I click on the link ”
A system error has caused a delay in processing your application. Please try again later.
”
Have you gotten an actual application to load?
Is this card subject to the “first time applicant” provision?
@Kalboz, the footnotes state that “This Citi® / AAdvantage® card offer is only valid for new Citi® / AAdvantage® accounts applied for pursuant to this offer and excludes any other Citi® / AAdvantage® credit cards offered.”
So does “and excludes other Cit AAdvantage credit cards offered”? mean that holding another Citi AAdvantage card doesn’t count against you being a new account? That’s an awkwardly phrased sentence.
This card used to credit your earned miles toward million miler status which was a unsung great benefit of the card…………But does it still do that?
This 50k offer has been out on me and moms monthly statement from aa several times now. I’m exp she has no status is the 50k offer that rare?
I’ve seen it numerous times but it used to give you million miler point accrual which it does not do now…..however after the merger with US Air the boarding area joke will now be “will the two people who don’t have status now board the plane so we can take off?”
The page you requested could not be located.
If you need immediate assistance, please call the Customer Service number on the back of your card or on your statement.