American Airlines is one of the big three US airlines, but I'd argue they have the best frequent flyer program in the states right now. The reason comes down to AA mile's top tier flexibility and incredible redemption opportunities. While Delta is tied to the cash fare of the flight and United miles are costly in general, AA has several awesome sweet spot redemptions that are hard to beat.
In this article, we will delve into how to earn AA miles (warning: it's a bit difficult), sweet spot redemptions, award cancellation policies, and more.
How To Earn American Airlines Miles
Flying On American Airlines Flights Or Partners
The most classic way to earn American Airlines miles is by flying on AA flights. AA's mileage system is based purely on the base fare of the flight, meaning you will not earn any miles on the taxes & fees paid for a flight.
- Member – 5 miles for every U.S. dollar
- Gold – 40% bonus
- Platinum – 60% bonus
- Platinum Pro – 80% bonus
- Executive Platinum – 120% bonus
So, if you paid $100 for a standard economy flight flying 10,000 miles as an American Airlines Gold member, you would earn just 700 miles (regardless of the total distance flown).
When flying on partner airlines, you're also eligible to earn miles, but calculations there will differ than how you earn on American Airlines tickets. Generally speaking, you'll earn miles based on the distance you travel and your fare class. For instance, when flying on Japan Airlines, if you fly in premium economy fare class E on a 10,000 mile flight, you'll earn 10,000 American Airlines miles as a standard member.
Credit Card Transfer Partners
American Airlines miles are not easy to come by given the lack of transfer partners.
- Bilt (1:1) (winding down in June 2024)
- Marriott (3:1)
Not even Citi can get access to American Airlines as a transfer partner. This results in a general lack of AA miles in the ecosystem, which (in theory) leads to the better award pricing we see.
Buy American Airline Miles
Like all major airlines, American Airline miles are very easy to buy. However, unlike other major airlines, it's rare to find a good reason to purchase AA miles. Normally, people only buy AA miles if they need a few thousands miles to top off their award flights. But, just be wary that purchasing AA miles is typically very expensive, sometimes 3+ CPP to just purchase points.
Credit Card Spending & Sign Up Bonuses
American Airlines cobrands its credit cards with Citi. These cards enable you to earn AA miles while spending on your day to day expenses. Additionally, these can be great ways to earn more AA miles since they typically feature fantastic sign up bonuses that can quickly accelerate your AA mileage totals.
Do American Airline Miles Expire?
AA miles expire after 24 months of inactivity. AA will automatically extend your mileage expiration date 24 months from the date of your most recent qualifying activity.
What is qualifying activity you may ask? It's not necessarily just flying—there are several other techniques that will help restart the timer on your valuable miles:
- Earn miles through a partner flight, hotel, rental car, shopping, dining, and more
- Active AA cardholders will not be subjected to the 24 month mile expiration rule
- If you are under 21 year olds, your miles will not expire
If your miles expire, not all hope is lost. You can recover up to 500,000 miles with a fee, but you can expect this fee to scale with the number of miles you have to reactivate.
How To Earn American Airlines Status
AA uses a unique metric called the "Loyalty Point" that tracks American Airlines flight spend alongside credit card usage and spend with AA partners.
AA status is based on a non calendar year, with the status qualifying year beginning March 1 and ending the last day of February in the following year.
Advantage members earn 1 Loyalty Point for most cases where they earn redeemable AA miles. That is to say, if you earn 1 AA mile, you should earn 1 Loyalty Point. This stands out because none of the other airline shopping portals allow users to earn status qualifying points while American allows you to earn on AA Dining, Simply Miles, and more. Some examples of situations where you might not earn Loyalty Points despite earning redeemable AA miles are:
- Bonus miles: some AA promotions advertise “bonus miles.” These miles will not earn you Loyalty Points. A common example is in AA’s shopping portal, which sometimes offers additional bonus miles for meeting a certain spending threshold.
- Bask bank miles earned do not count as Loyalty Points
- Miles earned from sign-up offers do not count as Loyalty Points
- Additional miles from bonused credit card spending categories do not earn additional Loyalty Points. That is to say, you earn one Loyalty Point for every eligible dollar spent on the card.
AA status can give you a wide range of benefits, including free upgrades, free checked bags, priority boarding, etc.
What Are American Airline's Partners?
As one of the oldest airlines in the world, American Airlines is a part of Oneworld, a major alliance of airlines comprised of airlines like British Airways, Japan Airlines, Qatar Airlines, etc. When flying on any of these airlines, you can elect to earn American Airlines miles and can attach your AA number to receive status benefits.
AA also has a set of non-alliance partners where you can also earn/redeem AA miles on. Some major ones include:
- Air Tahiti Nui
- Etihad Airways
- Fiji Airways
- JetBlue
- Hawaiian Airlines
Advantage members earn 1 Loyalty Point for most cases where they earn redeemable AA miles. That is to say, if you earn 1 AA mile, you should earn 1 Loyalty Point. This stands out because none of the other airline shopping portals allow users to earn status qualifying points while American allows you to earn on AA Dining, Simply Miles, and more. Some examples of situations where you might not earn Loyalty Points despite earning redeemable AA miles are:
- Bonus miles: some AA promotions advertise “bonus miles.” These miles will not earn you Loyalty Points. A common example is in AA’s shopping portal, which sometimes offers additional bonus miles for meeting a certain spending threshold.
- Bask bank miles earned do not count as Loyalty Points
- Miles earned from sign-up offers do not count as Loyalty Points
- Additional miles from bonused credit card spending categories do not earn additional Loyalty Points. That is to say, you earn one Loyalty Point for every eligible dollar spent on the card.
How American Airlines Prices Award Flights
American Airlines employs a region-based semi-dynamic award chart for its own flights and for its partner flights. This system means the number of miles required for a flight depends on the origin and destination regions, as well as the class of service. The award charts help to define the absolute lowest price you'll see for an award flight (often known as "Saver" pricing for an airline).
The American Airlines chart is very long and convoluted. We'll show a few examples to help explain some of the best options on there. This first chart is for American Airlines award bookings flying on American Airlines metal originating in North America. Pretty simple chart all around.
One-way award pricing for American Airlines award flights originating in of North America
When we start looking at partner award pricing, things get very messy. In summary, AA divides the world up into 10+ different zones, so your award pricing will vary depending on which part of the world you depart from. For instance, if you depart from North America but on a partner Oneworld airline, you'll be subject to the following pricing:
One-way award pricing for American Airlines partner award flights originating in of North America. Pricing will differ here.
As we can see in the above chart, this pricing will start to align with some of the best award sweet spot redemptions out there. USA to Japan (considered Asia Region 1) costs just 60,000 AA miles one way. Likewise, USA to the India subcontinent costs just 70,000 AA miles one way.
AA has this award chart going for each of its 10+ regions, where the partner pricing varies entirely depending on where you are departing. Super interesting, yet complicated stuff here.
American Airlines Sweet Spots
American Airlines is quite literally the last bastion of the old points guard. While pretty much every other major program has gone under a devaluation recently, AA has kept its fantastic award pricing... so far. This section will feature 2020-esque award deals that are among the best in the game.
You can use Roame to easily find valuable AA awards while being able to compare against other options. Especially considering some fares are much harder to find than others, using SkyView to set alerts & monitor for new options is a good move as well.
USA <> Japan On Oneworld Partner Business Class: 60k Miles One Way
Among the major US carriers, they are the only option left where you can book a fully refundable award ticket to Japan for just 60,000 miles + $5.60 USD in taxes one way (excluding Alaska Airlines from Seattle). Notably, this includes JAL's nonstop routes from Boston, which is just 60,000 miles as well.
Since this is such an incredible deal, it can be a bit difficult to find award availability. Given that AA releases all of its award flights 331 days in the future, it's probably in your favor to book as far in the future as you can.
However, if you're looking 1–10 months out, you might be out of luck. In this scenarios, I would recommend you set a series of award alerts to monitor that route on SkyView. On the other hand, if you are flexible, Japan Airlines typically releases more award availability starting just 14 days before departure.
Flights found using Roame SkyView
USA <> India On American Airlines Business Class: 65k Miles One Way
Another incredible deal is the ability to fly to India from USA airports for just 65,000 miles one way. What's awesome is that this pricing remains the same even if you need to reposition to JFK from a different airport.
Again, given how amazing this deal is, it can be a bit difficult to find this award. You'll need to look far ahead, close in, or set alerts to monitor for random award drops.
Flights found using Roame SkyView
USA <> Middle East On Qatar Airways Business Class: 70k Miles One Way
This deal is more normalized across the Oneworld booking channels, but is still a fantastic way to use your miles. Specifically, you can fly from all major US airports to Doha for just 70,000 miles each way on Qatar Airlines business class. This also includes destinations like the Maldives, which is also priced that exact way.
Flights found using Roame
USA <> Africa On Oneworld Partner Business Class: 75k Miles One Way
In an almost on brand kind of way, American Airlines flights to Africa are also an incredible deal, especially once you consider the fact that you're basically getting 2 business class flights for just 5-10k more miles than the other options.
Finding these flights might be even harder than some of the other options we talked about because of the nature of the type of the flights here. Getting two long haul business class flights on the same ticket can be incredibly difficult. You're going to want to be on top of these seats when they get first get released.
Europe <> Asia On Oneworld Partner Business Class: 75k Miles One Way
Booking partner flights between Europe and Asia can also prove to be an incredibly fruitful effort. This route only costs 75,000 AA miles each way for a flight that is well over 12 hours. Notably, it should be a bit easier to actually use your AA miles on this route since not many Americans are flying this, so there are less people with this many AA miles competing for the limited number of seats on this route.
Cancellation and Change Policies
AAdvantage has liberalized its cancellation and change policies, particularly for award tickets. Most award tickets can now be canceled and miles reinstated without a fee, provided it's done before departure. This literally means you can cancel an award ticket 1 hour before departure. Closest I've done is 16 minutes.
Cancellations can be processed easily online, with little to no difficulty.
Something I know people do is find an AA flight using a tool like Roame and then book the flight using their AA miles. They then have the flexibility to cancel that flight if a better option ever arises.
Conclusion
American Airlines is one of my personal favorite US based award programs and for good reason. It has some of the best award redemptions in the game for many routes—it's just straight up hard to beat the price and value you can get out of your AA miles. However, accruing AA miles is generally the difficult part of the equation, so make it a priority to get these miles as you go.
