American Airlines AAdvantage Program
American Airlines is one of the largest airlines in the world, and its frequent flyer program – AAdvantage – can be especially lucrative! As part of Oneworld alliance, American Airlines allows you to earn and redeem miles with more than a dozen other airlines within that alliance. Moreover, American Airlines also has a number of non-alliance partnership with other airlines!
The following airlines allow you to earn and redeem AAdvantage miles for their flights:
Oneworld partner airlines:
- American Airlines
- Alaska Airlines
- British Airways
- Cathay Pacific
- Finnair
- Iberia
- Japan Airlines
- Malaysia Airlines
- Qantas
- Qatar Airways
- Royal Air Maroc
- Royal Jordanian Airlines
- SriLankan Airlines
Non-alliance partners:
- Aer Lingus
- Air Tahiti Nui
- Cape Air
- China Southern Airlines
- Etihad Airways
- Fiji Airways
- GOL Airlines
- Hawaiian Airlines
- IndiGo
- JetBlue
- JetSMART
- Silver Airways
American Airlines prices its own flights dynamically, which can lead to huge fluctuations in the amount of points necessary to book a particular award flight. However, American prices its partner airlines’ flights through a fixed, region-based award price chart!
Because American Airlines is a key player in Oneworld alliance, this means that you can book aspirational flights from other Oneworld carriers at very competitive prices thanks to this fixed chart. Beyond flying Oneworld carriers using your AA miles, you can also book AA’s non-alliance partners using the same fixed partner chart! What does this mean? It means that American Airlines’ AAdvantage Program is especially lucrative for all the airlines listed above, even though that’s not always the case when it comes to its own flights.
Here are three examples of aspirational products you can book using your AAdvantage miles:
- Fly JAL business class to from the USA to Tokyo for 60K miles, or JAL first class on the same routing for 80K miles
- Fly Cathay Pacific business class from the USA to Hong Kong for 70k miles, or Cathay Pacific first class on the same routing for 110K miles
- Fly Etihad business class from the USA to the UAE for 70K miles, or Etihad first class on the same routing for 115K miles
and so much more! These are just three examples meant to show you the high value of AA miles at a glance.
Transfer Partners
Unfortunately, only three programs allow you to transfer points to American Airlines’ AAdvantage program:
- Marriott Bonvoy (3:1 ratio)
- World of Hyatt (2.5:1 ratio)
- IHG One Rewards (10,000:2,000 ratio)
Generally speaking, these ratios aren’t very favorable. Although you can earn some bonus AA miles as you transfer your hotel points in larger increments, these transfer ratios remain non-competitive. We don’t recommend transferring your hotel points to AA unless you’ve got enough points to burn and don’t particularly care about maximizing their value.
The fact that no banks partner with American Airlines often leaves people with the impression that AAdvantage miles are practically impossible to earn unless you’re a very frequent flyer. However, that’s not necessarily the case! Let’s go over some of the best ways you can earn AA miles.
Best Ways to Earn American Airlines AAdvantage Miles
There are several ways that you can earn AA miles. Here are some of them!
Fly on American Airlines
To start with, you can earn AAdvantage miles when you book cash fares on American Airlines. The amount of miles you earn for your flight depends on the cost of your base fare plus carrier-imposed surcharges, excluding any government-imposed taxes and fees. The amount you earn also increases based on your elite status (which we touch upon later!).
- AAdvantage member (without status): 5 AAdvantage miles per dollar spent
- AAdvantage Gold: 40% bonus miles, or 7 AAdvantage miles per dollar spent
- AAdvantage Platinum: 60% bonus miles, or 8 AAdvantage miles per dollar spent
- AAdvantage Platinum Pro: 80% bonus miles, or 9 AAdvantage miles per dollar spent
- AAdvantage Executive Platinum: 120% bonus miles, or 11 AAdvantage miles US dollar spent
Fly on Partner Airlines
You can also earn AAdvantage miles when you fly on American’s partner airlines, whether Oneworld or non-alliance! You just have to ensure that you enter your AAdvantage frequent flyer number in your passenger details, so that the partner airline can properly credit the miles for your flight.
The amount of miles you’ll earn for your flight varies based on which airline you’re flying. You can find more details on American Airlines’ website: click here, and you’ll be able to navigate to the airline you’re interested in. For most of these partners, you earn miles based on your flight distance and fare class of your flight.
Leverage Co-Branded Credit Cards
The easiest way to earn a huge lump-sum of AAdvantage Miles is to apply for a co-branded credit card and qualify for its sign-up bonus by meeting the minimum spend requirement. After you receive the miles from the sign-up bonus, you can continue using your cards to earn miles for your everyday purchases! Just don’t forget: think of your wider credit card points-earning strategy and how these AA cards might fit in there.
Here are some of our favorite cards:
- Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard®
- Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard®
- Citi® / AAdvantage Business™ World Elite Mastercard®
- AAdvantage® Aviator® Red World Elite Mastercard
- AAdvantage® Aviator® World Elite Business Mastercard
You can find out more about them – including welcome offers, minimum spend requirement, annual fee, bonus category earnings, etc – here.
Use the AAdvantage Shopping Portal
You can find the AAdvantage Shopping Portal linked here. Note that you don’t need to be a card-holder to use the shopping portal, nor do you need to pay with an AA co-branded credit card! You only need an AAdvantage frequent flyer account, and you can pay using any card – you’ll still earn AA miles for your purchase.
Using shopping portals is referred to as “stacking” rewards – meaning that in addition to earning points through whatever credit card you’re using for your purchases, you’re also earning additional miles thanks to using a shopping portal. You can earn extra miles at 1,200+ retailers if you shop through AA’s shopping portal!
Using the shopping portal isn’t difficult. Once you sign-up, you just have to click through the portal to your specific retailer. You’ll be redirected to the retailer’s website, and then you can shop and earn extra rewards!
Different retailers offer different rewards based on which portal you’re going through. They also vary over time. That is to say, always reference other shopping portals (such as Rakuten) to determine whether you’re maximizing your rewards!
Here’s an example of what you could earn using AA’s shopping portal:
Once you get into the habit of using shopping portals, you’ll see how much more quickly you’re earning miles! The next time you order Hello Fresh… instead of going through the Hello Fresh website directly, go through a shopping portal first and see how much more you’ll earn! That’s what makes the difference between earning 80 credit card points for your first order vs earning 4,100 miles!
Use the AAdvantage Dining Portal
Just like there are many shopping portals out there, there are many dining portals. We’re linked the AAdvantage Dining Portal here. You don’t need to be a card-holder to use the dining portal, and you can link any credit or debit card. The only thing you need to note is that each card you have can only be enrolled in one dining portal: so for example, your credit card can’t be enrolled in both Rakuten Dining and AAdvantage Dining – it can only be enrolled in one. If you’ve accidentally enrolled it in both (or more than two), the last enrollment is the only one that counts.
You can expect to earn up to 5 AAdvantage miles per dollar spent on dine-in and takeout orders from thousands of restaurants in the U.S. by joining AAdvantage Dining. You don’t have to do anything special: once you enroll your card, any time you use that card at a qualifying restaurant, you’ll automatically earn extra AAdvantage miles on top of what you’re earning through that credit card.
To maximize your points earning potential, make sure you link and use cards that already earn bonus points on dining!
Use the AAdvantage Hotel Portal
You can find the hotel portal here. It works similarly to shopping portal, in the sense that instead of booking your hotel stay directly through your hotel of choice, you’re booking it through the AAdvantage Hotel Portal instead.
The amount of miles you earn depends on whether you’re a card holder, whether you have status, and how much you’ve spent on your stay. The amount of miles you earn per stay is capped at 15K. Here’s what you can expect to earn:
And as a random example, here’s what you could earn from spending a weekend in Rome and booking your hotel through the AAdvantage Hotel Portal:
Link SimplyMiles Offers to Any Mastercard
SimplyMiles is a portal featuring merchant offers that allow you to earn extra bonus points. The caveat is that (1) you need to have a Mastercard (any works across all banks; not just co-branded ones), and (2) you need to specifically link those offers to your card in order to use them.
Here are some offer examples:
Once you sign up for the portal, just activate the offers that you’re interested in and they’ll be linked to your card! The best part? You can stack your rewards! For example, if there is a SimplyMiles offer for a specific merchant and an AAdvantage Shopping offer for the same merchant, you can stack your rewards the following way:
- Activate the offer on your Mastercard through SimplyMiles
- Shop through the AAdvantage Shopping Portal and use the card that has a SimplyMiles offer at checkout
Voila! You’re officially earning rewards through three avenues:
- Directly through the credit card that you used
- Through SimplyMiles’ activated offer
- Through the Shopping Portal
Redeeming American Airlines AAdvantage Miles
As we previously mentioned, the AAdvantage Program prices American Airlines-operated award flights dynamically. However, you can get tremendous value from you AAdvantage miles if you use them to book flights operated by partner airlines! This is because of AA’s lucrative fixed partner award chart, which you can find linked here. While it’s not guaranteed that these airline partners will release their award space to American Airlines’ loyalty program, it’s 100% worth it to check.
Let’s go over some of the “sweet spots” – otherwise known as the really good deals!
Reasonably Priced AA-Operated Flights
You shouldn’t write off flights operated by American Airlines just because its own award chart is priced dynamically! You can still find some really good options. Take a look at this chart for reference:
Flights you find priced lower than the values listed here can be considered average or even good deals!
For example, look at this flight to Madrid – even though it’s operated by American Airlines, its pricing is actually good:
Booking Partner Airlines
This is American Airlines’ partner award chart, which you can use as a baseline to determine the cost of an award flight from the U.S. to various regions.
Here are some examples of what this means in action:
JAL to Japan or South Korea: Business Class (60K) or First Class (80K)
If you were to try booking this exact same flight on a cash fare, it would cost a staggering $17,398 instead! Redeeming this flight, the value of your miles is 21.74 cents per mile.
(To put this in context, when you redeem your credit card points in the bank portal you usually redeem at a rate of 1 cent per point!)
Etihad to Abu Dhabi: Business Class (70K) or First Class (115K)
In this example, there are two ways you can leverage AA’s non-alliance partnership with Etihad to fly to Abu Dhabi in first class:
In the first one, you can fly Etihad First Class on the Boeing 787 nonstop from New York to Abu Dhabi. This is stellar first class product, and the convenience of a nonstop flight is unparalleled!
In the second case, you combine an American Airlines-operated flight to London, where you’d transfer to fly an Etihad-operated flight to Abu Dhabi. Why would you want to do that? Because the second segment of your flight – from London to Abu Dhabi – is flown on an Etihad’s Airbus A380, “The Giant in the Sky”, and features Etihad’s signature First Class Apartment… and you could even upgrade to The Residence!
While the regular first class product on the 787 is great, the one on the A380 is unmatched!
Qatar Airways QSuites to Doha and Beyond Starting at 70K Miles
Recently it’s been tougher to find QSuites award space through AA’s loyalty program, so if you do, don’t hesitate to book! This is one of the best ways that you can fly Qatar Airways’ premium products.
Fun fact: If your layover is at Doha and your itineraries continues to another regional hub, such as Dubai, it’s very likely that the second segment of your flight (Doha to Dubai) is marketed as a First Class product, even though it’s technically still business class. This is important because the fact it’s marketed as a First Class ticket gives you access to the extremely exclusive and luxurious Al Safwa First Class Lounge in Doha!
Adding Regional Flights at No Additional Cost
Finally, remember that this is a region-based chart! This means you can add on an additional flight at no additional miles, as long as it is within the same region and there is an award flight available on that separate route. For example:
You may have a business class flight on JAL from San Francisco to Tokyo. However, you’re based in Cleveland, and there appear to be no reward flights from Cleveland to Tokyo when you run an award search! If you’re able to find:
(1) An award flight from San Francisco to Tokyo, and
(2) An award flight from Cleveland to San Francisco
You can call American Airlines to link those separate itineraries. No matter how much the flight from Cleveland to San Francisco costs, it’ll be added to your long-haul itinerary to Tokyo at no extra cost because it’s still within the North American region!
Similarly, maybe you found a flight from Chicago to Tokyo, but you actually want to go to Seoul. In this case, you would look for an award flight from Tokyo to Seoul: once you find one, you can call American Airlines and ask them to add it to your long-haul itinerary at no additional cost because South Korea and Japan are both considered to be in the same region in Asia, according to AA’s partner award chart.
American Airlines Status
If you’re loyal to American Airlines or its partners, you can earn extra benefits by pursuing status. American Airlines offer four tiers of status to the public: Gold, Platinum, Platinum Pro, and Executive Platinum. Beyond that, they also offer an invite-only tier called Concierge Key.
The currency that gets you status is called “Loyalty Points” (LP). Some activities earn you both AAdvantage miles and Loyalty Points, which is why the two are often confused. You have to earn a certain amount of Loyalty Points per qualification period (which usually runs from the start of March in the current year to the end of February in the next year):
- Gold: 40,000 Loyalty Points (Equivalent to Oneworld Ruby)
- Platinum: 75,000 Loyalty Points (Equivalent to Oneworld Sapphire)
- Platinum Pro: 125,000 Loyalty Points (Equivalent to Oneworld Emerald)
- Executive Platinum: 200,000 Loyalty Points
Once you attain status, you get that status tier for the current period and the next one. That is to say, earning status for the qualification period from March 1, 2024 to February 28, 2025 would get you status through February, 2026. Beyond benefits on AA, having AA status (and its Oneworld equivalent) gives you benefits on its partner airlines. You can find out more about the benefits of each tier here, on AA’s website. Each tier comes with a wide array of benefits, including complimentary upgrades on domestic flights, free preferred seat selection and luggage, priority check-in and boarding, etc.
The important thing is this:
Earning status the first time is hardest, but afterwards, each time is easier. Why? Because having status allows you to earn up to 120% bonus mileage and Loyalty Points, which accelerates the pace at which you’re earning status even if you maintain the same level of spending and flying.
The Difference Between Loyalty Points and AAdvantage Miles
As we previously mentioned, a number of activities earn both Loyalty Points (towards status) and AAdvantage miles (for award flights) – that’s why the two are often confused! You can earn both miles and Loyalty Points at the same time, or only one or the other, depending on the type of activity you’re engaging in. Importantly, using your AAdvantage miles for award flights does not deplete your Loyalty Points amount, which only climbs higher as you grow closer to status.
If you choose to pursue AA status, it really helps to know what’s the difference between the two and which activities earn both, vs which earn only miles (but not Loyalty Points).
Let’s go over the list of activities that earn AAdvantage miles that we already covered, and see which ones also earn Loyalty Points:
- Flying on American Airlines-operated flights:
- Earn both miles and Loyalty Points, as long as you’ve booked a cash fare.
- The amount of miles you earn usually equals the amount of LP.
- Flying on American Airlines’ Oneworld partners and non-alliance partners:
- Earn both miles and Loyalty Points, as long as you’ve booked a cash fare.
- The only partners who are notable exceptions and earn only miles (without earning you any LP) are China Southern Airlines, Etihad Airways, Fiji Airways, and Hawaiian Airlines.
- Flying on American Airlines’ Oneworld partners and non-alliance partners:
- Earn both miles and Loyalty Points, as long as you’ve booked a cash fare.
- The only partners who are notable exceptions and earn only miles (without earning you any LP) are China Southern Airlines, Etihad Airways, Fiji Airways, and Hawaiian Airlines.
- Leveraging co-branded credit cards:
- Co-branded credit card sign-up bonuses earn you only miles, not Loyalty Points.
- Spending on co-branded credit cards earns you miles and Loyalty Points, but not in equal amounts. Bonus points earnings in categories don’t count: while you can earn miles at 2x or 3x miles per dollar spent, you always earn only 1 Loyalty Point per dollar spent.
- Using the AA Shopping Portal:
- Earn both miles and Loyalty Points, in equal amounts. If a shopping portal offer says you’d earn 3,000 miles, then you’d also earn 3,000 Loyalty Points towards status.
- Using the AA Dining Portal:
- Earn both miles and Loyalty Points in equal amounts. This means you can earn up to 5 LP and 5 miles for every dollar spent at participating restaurants.
- Using the AA Dining Portal:
- Earn both miles and Loyalty Points in equal amounts. This means you can earn up to 5 LP and 5 miles for every dollar spent at participating restaurants.
- Using the AA Hotel Portal:
- Earn both miles and Loyalty Points, in equal amounts. If a hotel stays earns you 12,000 miles, then you’d also earn 12,000 Loyalty Points towards status.
- Activating offers from SimplyMiles:
- Earn both miles and Loyalty Points, often in equal amounts (but not always). The offers in the portal specifically tell you how many miles and how many LP you’d earn from that offer.
Conclusion
Overall, there are many strengths to American Airlines’ frequent flyer program! While we normally emphasize the importance of earning transferrable points, we make a notable exception for American Airlines. Co-branded credit cards are definitely worth it for AA, as they can help you earn miles more quickly. These miles can then be leveraged to book a variety of aspirational products, whether they be operated by American Airlines or its partner airlines!
Note: Opinions expressed here are ours alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline, or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.
