American Airlines AAdvantage has a new promotion for bonus Loyalty Points on March and April travel that count toward status.
- Log into your account. Under promotions I’m seeing – and several readers report – Ready, set, jet toward status. Register by April 30 (and prior to booking a flight) to earn bonus Loyalty Points on each flown segment, up to 5,000 points, for travel completed by April 30.
- American is offering 500 bonus Loyalty Points per segment
- Plus, 1,000 more Loyalty Points for arrivals/departures at some Mexico and Caribbean airports).
- And 1,000 more when the segment is booked with an AAdvantage Business or Corporate account.
- Basic economy fares are excluded.
Only American flights (not codeshares) count, previously-ticketed flights don’t count, and these bonus Loyalty Points can take up to 14 days to post. Only mileage-earning tickets are eligible.
This signals that travel seems weak, and especially short haul international? Perhaps Mexico isn’t doing well for Spring Break. I’ll take any extra credit towards status, and there’s certainly no reason not to register (even if you’ve already got your expected March and April travel booked – although with no change fees you might try repricing those tickets – they may even have gotten less expensive!).
Can’t imagine why people wouldn’t want to fly to Mexico right now. Although comparatively…
It’s really annoying they make these only proactive and not retroactive re: bookings. It’s… still nice I guess… but really only benefits business travelers who are booking everything last minute not leisure travelers who have things booked further out.
And of course that’s who this is expressly designed for – as you note: “And 1,000 more when the segment is booked with an AAdvantage Business or Corporate account.”
So they’re trying to win business travel back. That’s a good goal, of course, but the way that they are doing it seems a little backwards, at least to me. Trying to kill two birds with one stone (promote Mexico travel and promote domestic business travel) seems lazy.
@Peter — You joke, but Mexico (Yucatan, at least) is looking ‘fine’ compared to Middle East.
@1990 – I mean, I did say “although comparatively…” but there is certainly a perception problem at the very least. Mentioned to a friend about the new PH in Mexico City opening next year and the response was “not going to Mexico!” Admittedly that was last week, but lots of places to visit in the world…
This just feels like two separate promotional campaigns. One is “travel to Caribbean or Mexico” and earn X LPs per segment. One is “business travel” for X LPs per segment. Probably not a lot of overlap between those two groups, although could be some.
I did look to rebook some upcoming travel next month but prices higher close-in (not surprising) and already separately targeted for a 2k LP promo for that travel (2 segments in a premium cabin). Would have been nice to stack the promos, but whatever.