American Airlines Extends Pause Of Mileage Expiration Through End of Year – Or April 1, 2022

by Gary Leff

This post has been updated to clarify American’s two different pauses in expiration dates.

On the heels of extending systemwide upgrades that were scheduled to expire in 2021 out to July 31, 2022, American Airlines has also extended its pause on mileage expiration. Miles won’t expire until January 1, 2022 or – for those who played the anniversary game – until April 1, 2022.

Here’s a screen shot from a family member’s account that hasn’t had activity since December 2019 (where I had a note to keep the account active).

I had assumed I would lean on American’s AAdvantage 40th anniversary promotion spin-to-win prizes to extend expiry for this account, but the couple of hundred points won never posted and I was about ready to act. Those points haven’t posted yet but will soon.

American Airlines mileage expiration had been paused through June 30, 2021. Normally American expires miles (for those 21 years and older) after 18 months of account inactivity.

What American has done is pushed out their pause from June 30 to end of 2021, but given those who played the AAdvantage 40th game an extra 3 months on top of that because everyone who played the game but didn’t win points was to be given 3 additional months anyway.

Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, and United Airlines no longer expire frequent flyer miles at all. Alaska Airlines expires miles after 24 months of inactivity.

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. “I had assumed I would lean on American’s AAdvantage 40th anniversary promotion spin-to-win prizes to extend expiry for this account, but the couple of hundred points won never posted and I was about ready to act.”

    I recall the small print said 8-12 weeks for the bonus miles to post.

  2. That must of rolled out today because yesterday I checked and had expiration in August. Now it shows April 2022. Nice because I was waiting for my 40th promotion points to show up in July and if they didn’t would have to scramble to post some other points.

  3. I just checked my and my wife’s accounts and both show an expiration date of July 26, 2021. Our last credited travel was January 2020. Maybe this “promotion” isn’t for everyone?

  5. Thanks for this info. FWIW, my wife’s and my miles were due to expire in October. I just checked our accounts and the expiration date for both is now April 1, 2002. (We’d both done the promo.)

  6. Oh, I forgot to play but my expiration is June 2022.

    What they should do is extend elite status. I will be demoted to Cattle Elite (or is it cAAtle elite) in 2022. What that will do is I will burn miles, even for domestic economy class tickets. I may burn for 5 years. Elite status would prevent me from burning because I would try to requalify and maybe burn it for one trip a year.

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