Tag Archives for american aadvantage.
American Airlines AAdvantage is losing its Argentina co-brand credit card partner. According to an internal American Airlines memorandum reviewed by View From The Wing, Santander Argentina bank “is ending its credit card participation in the AAdvantage program” effective August 13, 2020.
American Airlines is offering double miles, up to an additional 10,000 miles, for new tickets booked by June 30 and travel by September 30. They’re also promoting a fare sale through June 14 and vacation package discounts to goose summer bookings.
Barclays is offering their American AAdvantage cardmembers – both Aviator Red and Silver products – triple miles on all spending between today and June 30, 2020. The only unfortunate thing here is that you’re capped at 2500 bonus miles. So if you spend $1250 where you’d normally earn just 1250 miles, you’ll earn 3750 miles under this promotion.
Yesterday American Airlines decommissioned their old award calendar. The airline confirmed to me that it was supposed to be gone for good.
However there’s still a way to access this tool that lets you display award availability across a month by award type, something the new calendar does not offer.
Airline CFO Derek Kerr offered that the appraised value of the program is between $18 and $30 billion. And he confirmed that the program is expected to be used as collateral for a federally subsidized CARES Act loan. The “deal is not done yet with the government, [but we] fully expect it to be [by the] end of the second quarter.”
We’re past the stage where every discussion of travel leads to trip shaming, and have entered a stage where people disagree about whether they’re ready. That means it’s at least possible to offer promotions now without being universally shouted down for encouraging travel that nearly everyone agrees people shouldn’t be doing.
Let’s mix metaphors for a second. After a game of airline partner musical chairs in South America, everyone is solidifying the relationship with their new dance partner.
Delta began mileage earning and redemption with LATAM a month ago and just signed their joint venture agreement. Now American Airlines has introduced frequent flyer reciprocity with new partner Gol, based in Brazil, which Delta used to own a stake in.
As part of raising funds on the private market and from the U.S. government, the airline had its unencumbered assets appraised. Parker reported that the value of these assets came back at $10 billion “excluding the AAdvantage program.”
During the airline’s earnings call Parker was pressed on what appraisals found the AAdvantage program to be worth.
You can cancel an American Airlines award ticket online – there’s a cancel link in your account’s itineraries. Cancelling, through, doesn’t put miles back into your account. To get miles redeposited you’ve had to call American – until now, under certain limited conditions.
Rolfe Shellenberger, who with a couple of other executives under American’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing Tom Plaskett (once considered a possible successor to Bob Crandall) worked with consultant Hal Brierley to launch American AAdvantage as the first mileage-based frequent flyer program in 1981.
Many forget that Shellenberger’s AAdvantage was introduced as a promotion, and wasn’t made indefinite until April 1983 two years into its life. It wasn’t obvious at the start how big this would become. He wasn’t just known for frequent flyer programs, but also took credit for putting pianos on 747s.
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 »
