Tag Archives for american aadvantage.
For the upcoming member year (March 2024 – February 2025) there is no change to the number of Loyalty Points required to earn status, and no change to the number of Loyalty Points required to earn choice benefits.
There are, however, changes to the choice benefits.
American Airlines has announced upcoming changes to the AAdvantage program, and they are (1) most importantly, not big changes and (2) generally positive. That’s not something we’ve come to expect!
American Airlines offers incredible value through its partner award chart. Pricing for premium cabins especially on its own long haul flights is a big mess. Fortunately it’s still possible to get a decent deal occasionally – you just have to jump through some hoops to do it.
American Airlines Chief Commercial Officer Vasu Raja was the last guest of the season for the American Airlines internal podcast for employees. At the end of his interview, asked what’s coming in 2024, he noted that he was being interviewed solo and “there’s nobody here to tell me what I can’t say, so I’ll reveal a bit more.”
Delta talks publicly about its expectation of generating nearly $7 billion from American Express this year, and that it has a goal to stretch this to $10 billion. And because of this, it’s commonly believed to be the best at extracting revenue from its SkyMiles program. Yet SkyMiles is the least rewarding of the major frequent flyer programs. Its miles are indisputably worth less than competitor currencies. What’s going on here?
Those new to Bask Bank who open an account and save $25,000 for 90 days earn 5,000 bonus miles. You only are required to keep the money in the account half the time compared to the previous offer to earn the bonus.
And this is in addition to the standard earning of 2.5 AAdvantage miles per dollar saved annually.
American Airlines has had technical issues when AAdvantage members put frequent flyer mile award travel on hold, sometimes only holding a reservation for three days instead of the five days promised under their policy. There’s another glitch members are dealing with, and it’s costing them more miles if they don’t pay attention.
Many customers are reporting that when they put an award ticket on hold the flights are stored, but the price quoted doesn’t stick. Here’s one example where a single traveler was asked to pay an additional 122,000 miles:
Sometime over the past day, the Rocketmiles hotel booking website has seen it’s AAdvantage mileage-earning chopped by several orders of magnitude. Hotels that might earn 10,000 or more miles (and status-qualifying Loyalty Points) per night are now earning 200 or 300 miles. This is a strange development, but it does not appear to be a mistake.
Back in the fall I wrote that Citi would be ending the benefit of no annual fee authorized users with Admirals Club access, and likely raising the annual fee on the card itself as well. The ability for a single $450 annual fee to generate 11 cards (primary plus up to 10 authorized user cards) each with the ability to enter Admirals Clubs and also bring up to two guests was simply too good a deal.
Etihad business class award space is wide open this spring, for up to four passengers. And there’s even two first class awards many dates from Washington Dulles as well.
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 »
