American Express is sending out targeted offers – at least to Platinum cardholders, although possibly to customers with other cards – encouraging them to status match to Delta SkyMiles.
Status will last through August 31 and they will give you a level higher than what you currently have with a competitor.
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.
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. Worse yet, the page listing activity no longer shows full details. You need to click through each transaction one by one rather than seeing everything in a list on a single screen.
American Airlines on the other hand has maintained an 18 month expiration policy. Any activity in the account extends out expiration to 18 months in the future. During the pandemic, with younger leisure travelers making up a disproportionate amount of flying, American updated this to no expiration for members under 21 years old.
Now they’ve offered two further improvements: mileage expiration is now after 24 months of activity and Citi and Barclays co-brand cardmembers won’t have miles expire as long as their accounts are open.
Wyndham can be useful for home rental stays (generally 15,000 points per bedroom per night). Aeromexico is limited use, but there are some use cases. The most useful promotion here is with LifeMiles – reasonable award chart, no fuel surcharges, and awards across Star Alliance.
Capital One is adding a new 1:1 mileage transfer partner “in the coming weeks.” Virgin Red.
Chase, American Express, Citi and Bilt all transfer to Virgin Atlantic. Virgin Red is the multibrand Virgin loyalty currency that includes Virgin Atlantic. So this gives Capital One Virgin, too, while also allowing them to say they’re “the first US credit card issuer to partner with Virgin Red.”
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Along with the move to qualifying for elite status based on Loyalty Points rather than qualifying miles and qualifying dollars, American Airlines is eliminating 500 mile upgrade certificates and they are also processing elite upgrades earlier at the airport.
Here’s what it means and why they’re doing it.
It’s hard to imagine cutting food costs in U.S. Sheraton club lounges and lower than they’d go prior to the pandemic, given the cheap version of eggs and breakfast meats you could expect. Having pushed down the cost of items perhaps as low as they can go, now we can expect fewer items to be offered.
Sunday night’s Aeroflot 124 Moscow – New York flight turned around midflight. The U.S. hasn’t banned Russian aircraft from its airspace, but it’s tough for them to get here without overflying EU and Canadian airspace. They flew 8 hours and wound up where they started.
At the same time Aeroflot 111 from Miami to Moscow made it to its destination, violating airspace restrictions. They’re accused of lying claiming that this was a humanitarian flight, rather than a standard commercial flight.
An American spokesperson told me they’d only honor business class awards in their original class of service if Qantas had business class award space available. Since of course they do not, American will only rebook in coach. And, “you can have your miles reinstated or rebook to travel once we begin offering service between LAX-SYD again in November.”
The notion that when American exits a market it will not honor reservations in their ticketed class of service on a joint venture partner has important implications, I think, for the notion of consumer benefit that they are claiming as they defend a government lawsuit against their JetBlue joint venture.
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 »
