The update to the premium Citi AAdvantage Executive product which goes into effect July 23 seems like a step backwards for consumers. But it’s a step backwards for Citibank, also.
They’re raising the cost of the card, they’re adding little real value to customers, and they’ve failed to introduce a reason to actually spend money on it. In fact they’re removing one of the reasons that was already in place.
- This is the premium co-brand card that comes with American Airlines Admirals Club membership. The annual fee is going up (from $450 to $595) and authorized users will no longer be free ($175 for the first 3, $175 for each additional thereafter).
- The card is going to offer more bonus loyalty points (10,000 each earning 50,000 and 90,000 Loyalty Points in a year rather than once at $40,000 card spend) and is going to offer more miles for American Airlines spending (4 for the first $150,000 spent, 5 miles per dollar thereafter). Citi is re-introducing travel protections like trip delay coverage to the card. And they’re introducing statement credits with Avis/Budget, GrubHub, and Lyft.
For me it means an increase of $220 per year. Maybe I’ll use the Avis rental car statement credit. I don’t plan to make this my primary card for Lyft spend, and it’s a lot of hassle to generate $10 in spend on the card with GrubHub to benefit from the monthly statement credit. I’m not a GrubHub customer normally, and wouldn’t want to charge that spend to this card if I were.
But what’s really interesting is the change to how this card earns bonus Loyalty Points, credit towards status with AAdvantage.
- Currently you earn 1 Loyalty Point per dollar spent. That isn’t change.
- You also earn 10,000 bonus Loyalty Points for spending $40,000 in a year on the card.
- In the future you’ll be able to earn 20,000 bonus Loyalty Points – and it will not require a dollar of spend on the card.
They’re raising the cost of Admirals Club memberships by $200, while raising the annual fee cost of this card by $145. This will be the best way to get an Admirals Club membership by an even wider margin, even though it’ll be more expensive. They are working to put the card in the hands of the airline’s most frequent customers.
American Airlines Admirals Club, DCA E Concourse
But what they aren’t doing is anything to incentive actual increased spend on the card except for booking non-hotel loyalty program points-earning hotels. Loyalty Points bonuses will be earned after earning 50,000 and 90,000 Loyalty Points in the AAdvantage program, from any source, not merely from spend on this card.
You can generate these bonuses from having this card by flying, by renting cars, or by staying at Hyatts. You can earn the Loyalty Points bonuses from this card by spending on a Barclays AAdvantage card.
In fact many people have both the Citi Executive and Barclays Aviator Silver cards and have spent on each for their loyalty points bonuses. Based on the current product, it is better to spend on an Aviator Silver, earn Loyalty Points and 5k threshold bonuses after 25k, 40k and 50k spend, rather than putting that same spend on a Citi Executive card… spend with Aviator Silver, for a Citi Executive cardmember, will earn those Citi bonuses!
There is really no incentive for spend on a Citi AAdvantage card besides 1 Loyalty Point per dollar and Loyalty Points bonuses. But you no longer will need to spend on Citi Executive to earn its Loyalty Points bonus.
Returns on the spend in terms of redeemable miles are lower with these cards than with competing cards and now in a meaningful way this card’s return on spend overall is even lower than with a competing AAdvantage product! This was a huge missed opportunity.
Information about the Citi AAdvantage Executive Card is neither provided nor reviewed by its issuer.
Well articulated and the same conclusion at which I arrived….this becomes an Admirals Club membership card that has a useless MasterCard logo on it, as I will never use it for spend.
So – keep the card @$595 and get Plat Pro/Emerald for 105K LP, less if you have the Barclay’s Silver card potentially.
Interesting…
Gary, there’s an update to the AA hotels site as of today, it is now run by Rocket (I think the same company as Rocketmiles) and earnings have gone down significantly. If you book hotels from Rocketmiles, miles earning is now in the 100s miles rather than 1000s per day, which it used to be. Also, under Hyatt partnership, it now says you can earn 500 miles per stay rather than 1 mile per dollar spent. This to me is a huge devaluation. What do you think?
https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage-program/miles/partners/hotels.jsp
I’m above 90,000 loyalty points for the status year, so I should receive the double bonus once this goes live. I guess we’ll see what happens on the 23rd or 24th.
Problem is that in order to make that work, you need to pay $800 in annual fees. I guess some people will do that just to get the extra 15,000 LPs with spend on the Barclays card. But $195 is a pretty high annual fee to pay just for that. I’ll probably switch over to the Executive, to get the 100k sign up bonus and the club membership, plus the 20k LPs. At that point the Barclays card is superfluous. I don’t need them both. Even taking into account the wifi credits, $800 in AFs it too much for me.
I had my comments deleted, I think maybe because I put a link to AA’s site but Gary had mentioned that you could get LPs by staying at Hyatt. I was at their Hotel’s site and I am seeing some really big changes. For example, their new Hotel booking is now through Rocket and earnings are really really low (100s instead of 1000s of miles per night) and the site specifically says Hyatt stays earn 500 miles per stay (rather than 1 mile per $ spent). Gary, do you have any thoughts about these changes? It will definitely be a lot harder to earn LP via the Hotel route (I probably racked up about 20k LP just from Rocketmiles this year).
Aviator Silver card gives you companion pass, WiFi credit, in-flight food purchase credit and extra LP. I would be curious to see if Barclays make any changes to the Silver card. As it stands now, I have not been able to use the companion pass (too restrictive with blackout dates) and the other benefits, although good, aren’t worth $195 in my mind. They are also very inflexible when it comes to retention offers. With Citi giving out 20k LP without needing to hit a spend threshold, I may keep it even though it will have a higher fee and downgrade/close the Barclays Silver card (which has hefty spend requirements to get less LP bonuses)
Gary, the more I think about these changes the more I like them. The fee increase is significant, and I think it will really reduce the crowing at the clubs. Combine this with modest improvements to the club food and booze offerings and the club experience will really improve. For many years I also had both the Aviator Silver and the AA Exec card, but eventually I ditched the Aviator becuase the annual flight certificate was too annoying to use. I imagine now with the 4 miles per dollar on airfare now exceeding the ASilver 3 miles per dollar on AA flights, even more dual cardholders will dump the Aviator Silver. Why Citi is awarding Loyalty Points without requiring spend on the card makes no sense to me. A discount to earning status for cardholders is effectively what it is and that seems like an odd incentive to offer. As you point out, it does incentivize spending on the Aviator over the Citi cards, which doesn’t help Citi at all. When are the Citi and Barclays deals up with AA? I beleive you have said that this is the next airline credit card deal to expire.
@ Gary — Donating to save the earth makes earning ANY LP difficult to justify. I am surprised that you bother.
Let’s see if I have this right, club is increasing by $200 an we’ll get bonus points at a lower spend. The card is increasing in price, but $65 less the the club cost alone, so in essence you’re saving $$
Yes, now you have to pay for AU’s who needlessly clogged the club anyway and you’ve complained about for years
So aside for your biasd feeling towards aa, you see no value, yet you’re still saving?
Can I assume then your daily hawking of cc will cease finally:??
This card is so useless. It’s useful for scraping countertops and using it to adhere vinyl decals. Also, I hate that for authorized users you have to have the card in your possession. My husband was rejected from a club today because he didn’t have his card. Also, one more thought: AA isn’t going to do anything to improve the clubs. They just want more of our money. I bet they make the clubs even worse. The lounge is nice but having the lounge staff during irregular operations is very valuable.
Always sharing the useful information.
@Gene – American’s irrops make it better to be an Executive Platinum (than a lifetime Platinum). And I do fly on paid tickets for work, go through shopping portals where AA is sometime the best offer, earn from paid Hyatt stays etc.
@WJM – I covered this in an earlier post at https://viewfromthewing.com/warning-dont-book-hotels-at-rocketmiles-com-do-this-to-earn-aadvantage-credit-instead/
@Gary, Why only $220 more? I think the math is off.
Between increase of 145 in fees and 175 in user it is $320 extra each year
@JFKPHL
I agree. I hate the crowing at the clubs. Truly uncouth.
Have you seen the lines at Delta? AA does not need to have that happen to them. You can say Delta has great food but when you have to wait in line an hour and you only have 75 min between flights. It is NOT worth it.
No mention of the 4X for AA tickets ? Is this enough to move people from AmEx 5X?
I am out of the loop on all this and just catching up. I was just about to get the 10,000 for 40K on Citi end of this statement, so it sounds like I will get nothing for that now? (except the 1 LP per dollar). I was already over 100K LP so I got the 40 and 90 bonus for that.
Also maybe I don’t understand it, but how will we earn the Barclay spending on Citi and is that effective July 23? I already completed 20K on Barclay this qualifying year, will I earn something for that beyond the 5K I already got from Barclay?