Three weeks ago I shared that AAdvantage 2026 changes leaked online early and then were quickly pulled from the website. Those changes are now live, and they’re exactly as-expected.
- No changes to elite status qualification levels
- Some changes to benefit choices at various Loyalty Point Reward levels
- Eliminating and capping partner earning bonuses.
It’s this change to partner earning bonuses that’s a big deal for some – those who earn status via partner activity like shopping portal purchases are seeing a devaluation. But it’s also a big deal because, combined with eliminating mileage-earning on basic economy fares, it signals a shift in program strategy.
- Currently, members earn a 20% Loyalty Point bonus on eligible partner transactions after 60,000 Loyalty Points. The bonus increases to 30% once you reach 100,000 points.
- This will change to a single 25% bonus after hitting 60,000 Loyalty Points. It lasts for six months, and is capped at 25,000 bonus Loyalty Point.
Two years ago American Airlines made an Investor Day presentation where they pitched the only strategy they could, given the way they’d allow their assets to erode: their unique advantage was domestic small city flying across the South and the AAdvantage program.
After they’d retired so many widebody aircraft during the pandemic, and if they weren’t going to order more (indeed, they’ve deferred deliveries of some 787s), this was all they had. But their approach to AAdvantage was actually innovative.
- AAdvantage gave customers a reason to stick with American. Their miles were pitched as explicitly more valuable than competitors’.
- Their credit card charge volume had fallen from #1 in travel to #3. But their method of granting status based on nearly all partner activity was a real boost.
- Similarly, they viewed basic economy as a gateway into the program. It wasn’t just a way to punish flyers for buying cheap fares. Discretionary leisure travelers would get introduced to the program and hopefully engage, and take the airline’s co-brand card.
When talking about the desire of customers for premium, answer was AAdvantage. Now their answer is premium seats, clubs, and more customer-friendly policies.
- These changes are expensive, and they seem to be looking for pay-fors.
- And they’re giving customers a reason to choose the airline other than just AAdvantage.
Cutting basic economy mileage-earning can save a few dollars per basic economy passenger. And now that they’re offering free inflight wifi if you join AAdvantage, the bet becomes that drives signups and they don’t need basic economy mileage-earning to do it.
I’d take a different approach. I’d test eventual credit card conversions from pure inflight program signups versus those signing up with a basic economy ticket first, seeing which one generates cardmembers, before considering this change. My hunch is that those with some miles in their account would be more likely to take the card than someone who just signs up for the wifi.
Nonetheless, they seem to view wifi as the gateway into the program rather than basic economy and rather than both. This is a risky move for an airline that still doesn’t earn much (anything, really) flying planes – it generates all its net revenue from its Citibank partnership. That’s why CEO Robert Isom spends money on his Citi / AAdvantage Executive World Elite Mastercard even though he doesn’t need the miles, the lounge membership, or the contribution towards status.
As for the change to partner-earning bonuses, I suspect they didn’t get as much juice from it as hoped. But they really didn’t market it or explain it consistently to members. When logged-in, an eligible member should see old earning rates crossed out and higher (bonused) earning rates displaying. They should see it’s because of the tiers they’ve already hit, encouraging them to go higher. American never did any of this!
Now, though, they seem to be betting that AAdvantage is no longer the only reason to fly American and they can be a bit less generous with status, while cutting costs. They’re spending a lot of money now on premium experiences and to compete in places like Chicago.
And Robert Isom’s first admonition to employees upon assuming the role of CEO to ‘never spend a dollar you don’t have to’ dies hard. They may have replaced the strategy but they haven’t replaced the wartime-on-costs consigliere CFO.
American is still pretty clearly the best program among U.S. major airlines. However, too many of their partners restrict award availability to their own members now. I take the controversial view that AAdvantage is better, even, than Alaska’s Atmos Rewards because (1) Alaska’s award pricing on their own flights is terrible, (2) there’s still very limited ability to combine different airline partners on an award, and (3) they won’t even sell an infant ticket on a partner award.
It’s just that they seem to be chipping away slightly at the program, as they no longer lean exclusivity on it to attract flyers – seemingly forgetting that marketing for them isn’t an expense line, it’s a profit center, and it’s important to keep investing in it.
Alaska promised mixing partners by end of 2025.
Alaska promised awards on PR by end of 2025.
Both never happened.
By “eliminating and capping partner earning bonuses” I initially thought, ‘oh, no… no more cabin bonus on flying QR, JL, CX, etc.’ but it turns out it’s shopping portals. Phew!
The 1-2 times a year flyer really doesn’t benefit all that much from an airline co-branded credit card. Not to mention to qualify for particularly the top level ccs you need a credit score of 750 or above. Many Americans do not come close. That infrequent flyer buys off the cheapest fare.
I’m sure AA has done the analysis and realizes the BE flyer is mostly interested in going from Point A to Point B as cheaply as possible. Airlines will always have empty seats to sell and getting $75 for that seat is far better than it flying out empty.
@ Gary — “They can be a bit less generous with status” — Their status is fairly useless as it is. Please show some examples of desirable international destinations where an EXP can use SWUs on a roundtrip for 2 people IN ADVANCE.
86 the reward program 🙁 I recently went to book a flight from Austin Tx to Vegas. First, NO direct fights and the 1 stop flights keep you in the air for 5+ hours minimum for a 2 hour flight. Next, they wanted 71K miles for a round trip economy flight! 71,000 miles! I inquired about the cost of this one stop economy flight and it was over $700! Goodbye American. It’s been fun flying with you these past 50 years but I am outta here!
@Gene gets it. This is why I stop at 125K LPs for PP and OWE; don’t even bother with 175K for SWU. Got burned on the Waitlist too much. Would rather have 25+5 bonus points.
UA’s PlusPoints aren’t too different from SWU in that regard, yet, at least UA is now letting Platinum, 1K, etc. convert them to points instead of expiring. Good move.
Tim will be pleased to hear my praise for Delta’s RUCs and GUCs which do actually confirm in-advance. Same goes for jetBlue’s Move to Mint certificates. If it confirms in-advance it’s a winner.
I had a feeling that when they admitted they would need to follow Delta and United they meant “half-assed measures to look a bit nicer superficially and gutting our award program”. They always forget that Delta and United could only “afford” to do so because they had build brand cachet. Very few people are “proud” to fly American!
@RS Mallory — You should checkout SkyPesos… 71K for R/T in economy is a steal!
@ 1990 — Indeed I have high praise for the DL GUCs. Just flew A350-900 n/s DL1 xxx-ATL-ICN for 69,700 miles + 1 GUC owe-way. Availability was relatively easy to find and the flight was excellent except NO INTERNET OUTSIDE NA. Seriously? We flew UA Polaris to LHR, AMS, FRA, CDG, MUC, AKL, HKG, MEL over the past 18 months and had good FREE wifi on EVERY SINGLE FLIGHT. When will Delta join the 21st century?
Get rid of E shopping to earn points. Better off with Brick and Mortar. We even used to get shopping at certain grocery stores. Liked the program better then
Well summarized. Executive leadership still does not have a great understanding of how their business works in 2026. These folks, and their board, are not quick studies.
I hate to even mention it here but the one aspect that keeps me connected to Citibank- AAdvantage is that while dynamically priced point redemptions are horrible in advance, I find with AA that if there are connections with empty seats or even non-stops going out with inventory closer to departure, they are willing to make it worth your while. The points ask will often drop substantially below the typical cash ratio and redemption rate can easily north of, say, 2.5 cents per mile.
Without that, I’d be in the same place as I am with Delta- marooned, useless pennies, and a newly canceled Amex Platinum. Never going back to Amex btw
This is a good change if you don’t primarily earn status via the shopping portal. Tired of being #10 on the upgrade list as an EXP!
@Gene — EPIC. Hope your time in Seoul (or your final destination) was amazing! Wait, Polaris has free WiFi? Thought it was only texts. Like full-WiFi on my recent Polaris EWR-RAK flight was $8.
In general, AA miles are worth more than UA or DL miles. In general. Makes AA a good program to earn status with. (Likewise, perhaps, Alaska with their new card).
Do I love the loss of the 30% LP bonus and a 25k cap? No, but I also hated not having control over when the bonus period started. You never knew when miles were going to post, and even once you hit 60k or 100k it would often take a few days to “get the email” about the start of the bonus period. Not only frustrating, but realistically, I went from 60k to 100k pretty fast (with the Exec card you only need to get to 90k to get the next 10k bonus, so it’s only 30k LPs needed) and so I would often get ~8 months of LP bonus, not 6 months of 20% and then 6 months of 30%. I also always felt like I’d be able to get the 30% but then things would not post fast enough and I’d be stuck with 20% (or 0% – the horror!)
The 25k cap is better than what was leaked (15k). Maybe they saw the reaction and listened, who knows (leaks can be intentional for that purpose!). And I think there’s opportunity here – assuming the promotion stays the same for the following year (who knows), you generally have until March 31 to choose your rewards. So you could game the system every other year – choose to start your 25% bonus on March 1, 2027 (for the 3/1/27-2/29/28 period), then hit 60k LP by September 1, 2027 and begin the next six month period on 9/1/27 through 2/29/28. The way I read the website it’s 25k per promotion, so you could earn up to 50k bonus LP that way.
But that means you’re earning more than 200k LP from partner transactions in the first place in a year – which is a lot! I love AA Hotels (and think AA eshopping is OK, but it’s not as good as Rakuten…) but I’ll probably earn a little under 25k LP from the bonus for this status year, and that’s mostly with a 30% bonus. So while a 6 month time period is not necessarily as good as an 8-9 month time period, and 25% is not as good as 30%, there’s an element of circling the same square about this for me, and actually some advantages (or AAdvantages!).
As Gary said, the bigger problem is getting people excited about this and engaging with the loyalty program and partners – people didn’t even know about the 20/30% bonus and it was a constant source of confusion. I think registration solves many problems here, including that people may actually focus on it as a benefit. Of course, many people will not register, which saves AA some LPs as well. No idea how they value LPs for accounting purposes.
To the guy talking about 71K for a r/t economy from AUS to LAS … funny, I got one, nonstop, for 16.2K in Fall ’25.
Oh, wait, that was Delta. Talk about maxing out SkyPesos!
Totally inconsequential changes.
I highly doubt I earned anywhere near 25000 bonus LP from the “partner” portal offers, even with the 30% bonus. No net impact here.
Leff really stretching to make a big deal out of this.
Signed – a 250K LP EXP.
@ 1990 — We use our unlimited free wifi benefits from T-Mobile, so we always have free wifi on UA, DL, AS, and AA, as long as there is connectivity. Sadly, that often means no wifi on DL and AA (I refuse to pay AA’s extortionate wifi fee on international flights). I tell everyone they should compare T-Mobile to their current plan. They provide WAY more benefits at a lower price than the competition. If you are over 55 and/or active/retired military, the deal is even better!
And, if you want OWE, you should consider earning it through Alaska instead of AA, especially if you travel with a +1 and have a good use for their companion certificates.