Key Link: Citi® Platinum Select®/AAdvantage® Visa Signature® Card

• Limited time offer: Earn 40,000 American Airlines AAdvantage® bonus miles after $3000 in purchases within the first 3 months of cardmembership
  
• Earn an additional 10,000 AAdvantage bonus miles after you spend $10,000 in purchases within 12 months of cardmembership

In my best credit card offers page I’ve been listing a 50,000 point signup bonus for the American Airlines credit card, 50,000 bonus points after $2500 spend within 4 months.

The problem is that there’s no landing page for the offer, it’s just an application and it makes no mention at all of what you’ll get for applying. Which makes plenty of people nervous. It’s not my link, it’s been passed around quite a bit, and apparently it’s an offer that Citi hasn’t intended to still be ‘out there’ but that got left up nonetheless.

I’ve only gotten one report of a problem from a reader with this offer, they applied for the card using the link but Citi’s telephone reps had no indication that they would get the miles when he called, claiming the offer wasn’t attached to the application. I suspect he’ll still get the miles in the end because the vast majority of reports are that the offer has been working without difficulty (and I’ve even used a similar one myself).

But I get frequent clamoring for an ‘official’ offer, one with a landing page that actually specifies the points you’ll get. It certainly makes folks more comfortable to use those, since there’s an explicit promise being made by the credit card company, and you have something you can point to in order to ensure you get the points should they not post automatically.

Until now the best I’ve been able to point those folks to is a 40,000 point signup bonus offer.

But Citibank has come out with a limited-time official offer of 50,000 points for a new AAdvantage credit card. This is supposed to be available through December 13 only.

The spending requirement is higher to earn the full mileage than the unofficial no-landing-page offer. But many folks will find this one to be more attractive since it’s one that Citibank actually intends to be making available.

• 50,000 points are enough for a one-way business class award ticket to Europe or to South America. (55,000 points is one-way business class to Asia.)
  
• Reports are generally that folks can get approvals for two cards at a time by applying simultaneously via two different browsers, that generates 100,000 miles — enough to make those awards round trip.
  
• American miles are among the most valuable currency out there — I find their partners offer the very best first class award availability especially.
  
  • Etihad (suites with doors) to Abu Dhabi offers great availability.
    
  • Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong and beyond, they open up tremendous availability when schedules load and add more in the days and weeks prior to travel.
    
  • British Airways (albeit with fuel surcharges) opens up tons of transatlantic seats (though not as many as a year ago).
    
  • American’s own flights to South America, especially form their Miami hub.

Note that the 50,000 point offer in this post does offer referral credit to me if you’re approved for the card when using it, which I greatly appreciate. As I say there’s also a link to a 50,000 point offer which just shows you a credit card application but no landing page, that offer has a lower spending requirement, so consider which one is better for you.