Update: Your Loyalty Points may still show as zero, even though you’ve been earning them since January, but American tells me “LPs will start showing today but it will take a few days.”
The current site doesn’t show how many flight segments you’ve had this year, which matters because you need 30 segments to unlock ‘Choice Rewards’ (like systemwide upgrades) starting at the Platinum Pro level. American says “The Loyalty Choice Rewards tracker will also be available this week, [4th or 5th] at the latest.”
We’ve all been waiting for American Airlines to show how many ‘Loyalty Points’ we’ve earned. That’s the new way elite status is earned, where most transaction activity counts towards elite status. Online shopping can earn more points per dollar than flying, for instance, and credit card spend on a Citi or Barclays co-brand counts as well.
- The new status year is March through February. However this year we started earning Loyalty Points in January, giving an extra two months to earn status.
- At the same time American was also counting January and February 2022 as an extra two months of earning, extending the 2021 earn year. As a result they were still showing 2021 elite qualifying miles, segments, and qualifying dollars.
American didn’t invest in showing both qualifying miles, segments and dollars and Loyalty Points at the same time. On the one had this functionality would only be needed for two months of overlap. On the other hand you’d expect them to invest in making sure customers could see their progress in a brand new elite qualifying system, to ensure its success. Derek Kerr hasn’t been one to sign off on expediting IT investment in recent years.
Now that it’s March 1 and Loyalty Points are the new way status is earned, the American Airlines AAdvantage account site has been updated. When you log into your account there’s a pop up that flags the change.
However they aren’t yet showing how many Loyalty Points you’ve earned so far in 2022. Some members report that some transactions are showing in their total. In my account I show zero.
They’ll certainly get this sorted soon, but I’ve been anxious to see how Loyalty Points have been accumulating in practice, in other words whether the rules that have been laid out and the answers the airline has given have matched the reality of IT programming. Have some things counted that weren’t supposed to? Do I need to chase down missing loyalty points because they posted only as redeemable miles?
The other major change is how transaction activity shows on the site, and I do not like this change at all. Instead of a list of transactions with detail, all in a row showing bonus miles and base miles, there are now tiles for each transaction and you have to click through a transaction to see full details.
This is clearly a downgrade of functionality, since you need to do a lot more clicks to know what’s going on – you need to click through transactions one by one, rather than seeing everything in front of you on a single page. That’s disappointing from a design perspective.
Whoever at AA came up with this did a very poor job. Not user friendly.
Yes, they had months to get ready for this much-hyped program and still managed to drop the ball on opening day.
Checked first thing this morning to see how my loyalty points added up. So far, I to have zero loyalty points, but the old EQMs, etc still show up in the new format.
BTW: Gary: you have a typo in your post, “tot sign off.” Not complaining, we are all guilty of typos.
The Internet’s obsession with tile-based design is a scourge on anyone who actually wishes to use a website…
This is no different than any other IT overhaul at any other business. Every major IT overhaul has its issues. BA’s took months to finally sort everything out. Yes, it is frustrating. But, it is the nature of the beast. Put your binkies back in and wait.
Loyalty Points balance shows ZERO, my AA credit card spending from January/February 2022 did not count towards my balance.
Is this an error or all my spending within past 2 months were for nothing ?
Seems to me they should include a segments flown and credited counter. Appears they’ve neglected to include this. A big miss.
Don’t hold your breath…functionality will likely be a while coming. This is typical of what happens when aa.com touches anything…any time their IT department promises an “enhancement” it never is…it’s always a giant step backwards. (Just ask any AAirpass user. What was once one of the great remaining programs at AA is now a chore to use resulting in many members having to call AAirpass customer service repeatedly to fix bugs in the system). BUT: Ask aa.com to put a cute cartoon on their landing page or launch meaningless sweepstakes? They are world-class at that!
Not a fan of the tiles.
A fix for this could be rolling out a choice on the activity page: tile view, icon view, or spreadsheet view.
This type of change enables customer choice, which usually improves customer satisfaction.
That is, if anyone at American could hear this suggestion.
I will switch back to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan. There is no way I will pay $6000 for lowly Gold status on AA while I could spend less than half of that amount on AS and get MVP.
MCE and lounge access is more important to me than F upgrades. (Since you don’t get them anyway as evidenced by my 83 unused 500 mile certs in my accounts)
I’m going to get BA Silver for less than $2,000 and that will cover me for the better part of two years.
They should at least put a banner on the site saying things are a bit wonky, and not to worry about the zero balance lots of us have (all 4 of my family’s accounts are at zero, so I assume this is fairly typical).
Airlines and modern IT systems have a fleeting relationship, who know what the oldest link in this particular chain is, but I’m guessing it predates this millennium.
If anyone thought the new system would be up and running this morning, completely implemented and without error, then you must have fallen off the turnip truck last week….
The most interesting this morning is the E-shopping classification – the ones I care about are showing up as Base miles, not Bonus miles. That means they should, if things don’t change, convert to Loyalty Points.
Too early to see if actual flights are converting to Loyalty Points correctly. AA purchase bonus on co-branded cards are showing up as Bonus miles, so no Loyalty Points, just the base 1 miles/$ will convert to Loyalty. They really should change that, just to encourage use of their co-branded product.
Spotted an error – filtering on a date range doesn’t work right. The start date changes nothing, but the end date does work. Classic beta testing by releasing it into the wild and having the end-users report all the errors. Good thing we don’t test flight software that way – oh wait…
@ Reno, not even BA employees would hold up their IT as a reasonable baseline for what is normal or even acceptable. Total AA fail. Booking my flight with DL next week as symbolic protest. Not acceptable.
To be fair to AA, they indicated that activity prior to March 1 would show up in “early March” and they did not say that this would be showing March 1, even though some are. So, the expectation that this should have been here March 1 and the lack of same is a failure seems not to be warranted since it was never promised as such.
The tile design, though, is a fail as others have indicated.
But the results posting appears to be consistent with what was stated several months back.
Cheers.
AA has been clear all long – since the Loyalty Points change was announced – that LPs would appear in accounts sometime in “early March”. Not March 1st. So the 0s showing today are as expected and communicated. People need to chill on that aspect.
By the way, LPs do appear in the app.
@Reno Joe – Not showing up in mine at anything other than Zero, although I have discovered you do need to completely shut down the app and then re-start it to get LPs to even show up at Zero. I’m on an iPhone.
Unfortunately, my PlatPro status is no longer showing as good through 2025. They fixed that and it’s back to the standard 2023. Was hoping if I didn’t mention it, it would stay the way it’s been for six months, but that they fix…
If I’m not mistaken, not all spending on the Citi and Barclays co-branded credit cards looks to have been counted. My Citi card closed on February 3rd so the spending I did on that card for the rest of February didn’t card. Similarly, my Barclays card closed on February 16th and spending for the rest of February using the card was included, either. Does that sound right to anyone else and has anyone heard if Advantage is going to go back and grab that spend?
Actually, mine shows points earned for 2022.
Just reopened my desktop account – LPs are showing! Already past Gold.
Okay, taking a bit closer look, this is the Promo Bonus for Jan-Feb where we can double-dip.. No breakdown of that, but I’m guessing they may not do that. Will have to go through everything earned in that period and see if it’s calculated correctly.
Quick calculation – the Promo Bonus is for all spending and flights posted so far in 2022, including LPs calculated for flights at whenever elite level you are. Have flights from yesterday that have not posted, so that’s not in the Promo Bonus – I assume they’ll just be calculated normally from here on out.
@Gary Any word on how rolling EQD from 2021 combines with LP for upgrade priority thru Oct 31.
All –
Does anyone know if buying miles with mileage booster for flights (like pay 75 dollars get a bonus 2000 miles for this flight) will count as loyalty points? Usually triggers amex credits so could be useful
Exp here. Light travel so far this year (12 flights to MCI/STL) on the cheapest tickets. Already sitting at 35k tier points. I highly recommend using AA’s dining program & book hotels through their portal when hotel status doesn’t apply.
My LP have posted at over 200k but my elite status was upgraded to Pro rather than the Exec that I earned.
I will wait a few days before calling and hope they sort it out.
Just for the record, another longtime EXP unhappy with transaction activity not being detailed on the site, with tiles for each transaction I have to click through to see full details.
Since printed, mailed statements were abandoned by AA 15+ years ago I have printed out my year-end statement to have a moderately detailed record of what I flew and when. I so no benefit to disabling this functionality.
When you click on the tiles you don’t get details or breakdown at all of what the tile activity was. Not helpful at all!