American Express and American Airlines have announced a deal where Amex Platinum and Centurion cardholders can access American Admiral’s Club lounges (along with immediate family or up to 2 guests) prior to boarding American flights.

This adds American to Continental, Northwest, and Delta in the stable of airline lounges accessible with a U.S.-based Amex Platinum card.

With Continental, Northwest, and Delta all in the same alliance the Amex Plat was a slightly expensive way to get lounce access compared to buying a membership in one of those programs (which gets you access to all three programs’ lounges, without the limitation of flying on the carrier whose lounge youre using. So getting the card had to be justified by other benefits, such as the Fine Hotels and Resorts program… a valuable feature for those likely to make use of it. (Sure, benefits like the Amex Platinum concierge – Circles – is nice, but not orders of magnitude better than the useless folks at VIPdesk that come with less expensive cards.)

Now, with American’s lounge too, the card amounts to two separate lounge memberships for much less than it would cost to buy them separately. And that’s on top of the new benefit this year of up to four free domestic companion airline tickets in a calendar year (not to be confused with the international business class ticket that’s less useful to me as it requires a full fare on the paid ticket).

Way to go, Amex!