American Airlines has been sending out emails telling people that their AAdvantage frequent flyer accounts are going to be closed – unless they have some activity within the next month.
These aren’t the usual emails saying ‘your miles will expire’. And I’ve gotten several questions about what’s going on. In fact, in some cases people don’t even recognize the account numbers, and they wonder if it’s a mistake or some sort of phishing scam. It’s not.
Here’s an example:
We noticed your AAdvantage® account has been inactive with no award miles and may be closed unless you act by September 25, 2024. To keep it active, engage with your AAdvantage® account by booking a flight with us or earning at least 1 AAdvantage® mile.
Book now >
Earn now >We appreciate your business over the years and hope to see you again soon.
Terms and conditions
- To prevent your AAdvantage® account from being closed, you must engage with your AAdvantage® account no later than September 25, 2024, at 11:59 PM CDT.
- To engage with your AAdvantage® account you may:
- Book and ticket an American Airlines marketed and operated flight, or
- Earn AAdvantage® miles with American Airlines or any of our partners.
- Booked flights may have any future departure date, including departure dates past September 25, 2024, as long as your AAdvantage® number is included at the time of booking, the flight is marketed and operated by American Airlines and the reservation is ticketed and remains active.
- To earn AAdvantage® miles, the flight or partner transaction must be completed by you no later than September 25, 2024, at 11:59 PM CDT, and the earned mileage must post to your account no later than October 25, 2024, at 11:59 PM CDT.
- All members are subject to the AAdvantage® program terms and conditions.
For customers 21 years or older, miles expire after 24 months without account activity. This isn’t standard miles expiration, though, this is inactivating accounts. In some cases these are accounts which haven’t seen activity in many years.
It appears that American is, essentially, purging long-dormant accounts. Usually accounts are kept open because it’s cheap to do so. They might as well continue to market to customers even who are rarely if ever engaging the program. Plus, everyone likes inflated membership numbers. When programs share how many members they have it is never ‘active members’ (e.g. some activity in the past 24 months) it’s always ‘how many database records do we have’.
I never expect account termination, but who cares? If you have a years-old dormant account, and ever want to do something with AAdvantage, you’ll just create a new account. All you really lose is your ‘member since’ date. I even lost my original AAdvantage account opened 35 years ago. I let my miles expire in 1992, which is a shame because I had nearly 20,000 back then. And now my join date is only 28 years ago.
Some members had opened second accounts years ago without realizing it. So the account number in the email doesn’t match what they know their AAdvantage number is. Miles expired years ago. The account they use is active! And this is confusing, until they realize the account numbers don’t match. Then it seems like a fraudulent email (‘that’s not my account number’ it must be a hacker!’). In fact, it’s just database cleanup.
With all the data breaches these days, and companies post-breach obligations, it’s more desirable for them to purge inactive accounts than maintain them.
Buh bye AA.
@DWT, purging accounts only helps in a breach if the data involved actually disappears. What Gary describes as a purge may only be a deactivation. In the letter, AA states the accounts may be “closed” not purged.
Thanks Gary. I have a question. If my account is deactivated, will I lose my Platinum (for life) status?
Since you can turn them in for anything who cares?
I had so many Delta accounts it was crazy. For years I would just open a new account everytime I flew if I didn’t have my old account number. I thought I would get around to asking for the accounts to be merged. Most of them probably never got merged by me.
About 5 years ago they closed out my “dormant” account. I had to create a new account as a result and they wouldn’t give me credit for my past “lifetime miles.” That’s the problem with this.
Every mile in an account is a potential free flight…
All those cumulative miles are an issue on a quarterly 10K.
Potential free flights become a cost to the airline.
This move (closing old accounts) will remove potential expenditures against earnings.
Smart move by AA.
What happens if you charge something on an AA credit card? Do the Advantage miles you receive keep your account active and open?
I am happy to have them close my account because i won’t be flying them now or in the future.
Now that they have cleaned up the accounts, can they spend some time cleaning the cabins.
Good close it. I won’t use again.
I got my the notice for my 4 grAAvy train accounts. Bright back good/tense memories. My main survived 🙂
United only now!
–Virgin Atlantic send me an email years ago (over 10+), because I was not using it for several years (used to fly Virgin Atlantic a bit), they were shutting me down. Recently, I decided to transfer some Amex points in, went in to open up a new account. It turns out that my account still existed, and catch this, it had several thousand points in it.
–Similarly, over 10+ years ago, Hyatt sent me an email that my account was becoming dormant. Then they send me an email saying it was closed and my small balance of points were zero’ed out. But I was not happy and stopped staying at Hyatt. During the last Daily Getaways, I decided to open a new account on the outside chance I won their Hyatt points lottery. Also, I have been thinking about getting the Hyatt Chase card, to diversify my hotel chain cards. When I used my email to set up a new account, it turns out that my old account had been reactivated at some point. Go figure.
My guess is that some marketing whiz thinks it is a great idea to threaten account closures to generate business. Then, that actually causes business to go away, because who checks a hotel for the loyalty program, when they have been kicked out. Later on, the next manager reinstates the member, hoping they come back.
Ok, my conjecture is totally vapor, but I am curious what other people think.
it would have helped had AA not increased how many miles it takes to go anywhere. My canceled first class trip to Italy using 87k miles a few years ago is now over 400k miles, and they limit how many miles you can purchase if you don’t have enough.
Nope Zebraitis. It appears they are closing accounts with zero miles, so this does not erase any liability.
Hmmmm. I earned Million Mile status and lifetime Gold (which is essentially useless).
Now they’ll purge that lifetime status? Sounds like something AA would do.
How has no one yet picked up on the obvious reason for this? Inactive accounts likely mean a lot of ppl with expired contact info. AA has been on a tear recently adding policies that force folks to sign up for AAdvantage aka get their current personal info.
They made me pay to keep my previous miles active if I didn’t book another flight, I think it was $70. A year later they took me back to zero because I didn’t book any more flights. I decided it was better to use other airlines instead of the ‘pay to play’ game they wanted. Haven’t flown them since then, but over 400,000 miles on Star Alliance. At least United doesn’t erase my points if I take a travel break.
I have USA airline mileage accounts only with airlines that don’t disrespect me by making my miles disappear after a while of inactivity (Delta, United and JetBlue). Asian airlines mileage programs usually do not have such longevity so I make sure to apply the miles to my USA accounts if I can.
I recently opened my AA account – as in three weeks ago. Reviewed the email today that because I have zero miles and am inactive that it will be closed. Seems the threshold for inactivity is pretty low!
Received the letter last week. Flew on AA last summer using tickets purchased with my AAdvantage Mastercard, so I don’t get why I am subject to account closure. My lousy 35k miles are gone from my account. Now shows zero. But no problem, there are plenty of other airlines that I can use.
I got one of these emails. It was my mother’s Aadvantage account. She passed away 5 years ago.
All you need to do is use AAdvantage shopping when you’re making a purchase you already make and earn miles. I use it when purchasing my pet food a few times a year. You can keep your lifetime status (although I don’t know what this is for sure so I am guessing as your account would stay active) and your accumulated miles as you have activity within the 24 month period. You can also earn additional miles if you do this during their bonus times and make additional purchases. I never buy anything I don’t need or im.not buying already and it works for me.
If you’re not using a loyalty program why would you expect the company to be loyal to you? GTFU.
I have a DL account with zero miles. I don’t fly DL anymore. I joined only because they advertised free wifi for members. Apparently not on one single plane I was on 4 times a month, no wifi at all.
If DL wants to “Purge” my account I couldn’t care less.
@JOHN A, yes, if you use the cc your account is active.
Ya, I’ll never fly with AA again, you know all those stories about people asking to switch seats because they didn’t want to pay the extra seating fees or had to book last minute. Well I booked well ahead of time, I paid the extra money to have all my family sit together and then they gave away one of our seats randomly. I was told there was nothing they could do when checking in even with the confirmation email saying I had those seats booked. And I was only given a refund for the seat booking fee for the one seat that was given away (about $20 bucks).. Which doesn’t really make up for dealing with two small children solo with dirty looks from our seat partner who didn’t wish to move. So thank you for making me one those travelers.
I believe some of these accounts were created when US Air and AA merged. I recall seeing some FT discussion on this several months ago.
This is easy all they have to do is use American Airlines dining out program.
You’re spot on Gary. American is simply cleaning up accounts with no activity in five years and 0 miles. This is necessary as some people pass away or change their travel habits. It seems like a courtesy that they’re even going to the trouble to notify members
My deceased cats AA account is getting clipped. Hes never flying AA again
No problem. They have to get miles off the books for all the obvious reasons
You can buy something cheap through the AA eshopping portal to get activity to keep an account active for another 24 months. Link: https://www.aadvantageeshopping.com/
The negativity in these comments is true to Social Media. This Country is a shitshow & I know exactly the type that has made this once great county suck.
This exemplifies how much the “work” of communication with the airlines industry falls on the customer’s shoulders rather than American Airlines’ or the other bad choices all around cosimers have. “Your flight’s been cancelled, and we’ve automatically booked you on the next flight.”
“Oh, you want a different flight AND you want to know if the seats you paid $150 for your original flight will transfer to your new flight?”
“Let me look and see if those seats are available. No, it looks like they’re taken. Oh, there is one window seat left in premium economy. Unfortunately it costs more than your original prepaid seat.”
Narrator: the person flying is traveling overseas which means flying on wide body where there are seats w/extra leg room, not in economy premium, but at the exit row not over the wing but about 2/3 down the plane. This means the now available premium seat will cost not thousands more but more.
“Uh, is there not any other seat with extra leg room at the price I paid for my original seat?”
“No. There isn’t.”
I don’t mind terribly re: all of the above. But if I have to wait 6 hrs for someone to call me back due to “we are experiencing an unusually high numbers of phone calls,” (when is that not the case?” and don’t tell me to go to the “chat function which also appears to have a shortage of people available to help. Or the support account on “X,” which is ditto.
Now you want me to go through waiting just to find out that I have two accounts?
This is why I’ve come to avoid the airlines as much as I possibly can. Flying has become like going to war.
This is a no brainer. The majority of people are really not informed about these programs. I actually teach a class on it and most of it goes over their heads. I usually say “it’s like a bank account that you can deposit from all sorts of currency (fly, buy, eat, drive, etc) FYI … if flexible, these miles are amazing deals. R/T to Athens for 38,000 miles? You get 60,000 just to get the credit card. No brainer for AA. Cull the herd.
Mine is not over one or two years old – meaning within the last year or two I did fly American, yet received this notice. Also AA is an airline that during the pandemic said miles wouldn’t expire, then they did. I try to NEVER fly AA.
Some REALLY great posts on this thread tonight. FreeSpeechLover is the best.
Cancellation of “earned miles” is like a company breaking up with you and throwing all your posessions out in the lawn. It’s ethically/morally wrong, and SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN.