Category Archives: AAdvantage

AA Vacations: Piece Together Your Next Vacation & Chance to Win 100,000 AA Miles

AA Vacations is running a fun promo. Complete a puzzle to reveal six offers, then book a vacation for a chance to win 100,000 AAdvantage miles.

Here is how to play:

  • Choose from one of six types of vacations
  • Complete a puzzle which then gives you 6 offers to pick from
  • Choose your offer
  • Book anny eligible vacation package for your chance to win 100,00 AAdvantage miles
  • Flight + Hotel package myst be $1250 or higher
  • Reservations must be made by March 9, 2012
  • Travel until August 31, 2012
  • Not valid for travel 2/18-2/21/12

Check out the promo here

American Airlines: AAdvantage Dining- Get Ahead Bonus

a car on a road
American Airlines AAdvantage Dining is running a generous offer:
The Get Ahead Bonus lets you earn 2 AAdvantge bonus miles per dollar and dine at a higher level
To earn the bonus miles you need to:
  • Register for the Get Ahead Bonus
  • Spend $75 at program restaurants by 3/31/12 & complete dining reviews within 30 days of visit
  • Earn 2 AAdvantagebonus miles per dollar for each subsequent dollar spent dining through 4/30/12 (and continue completing dining reviews within 30 days of each dine)
  • This offer is open to all AAdvantage Dining members. If you are not a member you can earn a 1,000 mile sign up bonus. (sign up here)

*The $75 dine does not have to be at one restaurant, it can be any combination of dines at participating restaurants.

Sign up for the Get Ahead Bonus,  Click Here

CitiBank: "There is no impact to your Citi/AAdvantage Credit Card"

The American Airlines Chapter 11 restructuring should not have much impact on future travels/ AAdvantage accounts from everything I have read.
The bulk of my airline mileage account is made up of AAdvantage miles & I am not too worried about their safety.

Today I received an e-mail from Citibank regarding the AA Chapter 11 reorganization:

Dear Michael W,
On Tuesday, November 29th, 2011, American Airlines filed for reorganization under Chapter 11. Throughout the process, American Airlines has expressed its commitment to meeting its customers’ travel needs. As a valued
Citi® / AAdvantage® customer, we appreciate your continued loyalty and would like to share some additional information with you about your credit card:
There is no impact to your Citi® / AAdvantage® credit card account and American has given its assurance that your American Airlines AAdvantage® miles are secure.
You will continue to earn American Airlines AAdvantage® miles for your purchases on your
Citi® / AAdvantage® card without disruption.
You will be able to redeem AAdvantage® miles for the same great flight awards, upgrades, car rentals and hotels and more, subject to usual policies.
Citi is committed to our longstanding relationship with American Airlines and to continually improving our products to provide exceptional value and experiences to our customers. We would like to thank you for your continued business and loyalty and look forward to serving you throughout this holiday season and in the future.

Should you have any questions regarding American’s reorganization process, please visit www.AA.com/restructuring.
Sincerely,
Terry O’Neil
Executive Vice President
Citigroup North American Cards

It is reassuring to hear from Citi regarding the current state of American Airlines. I am glad they looked into what would happen with AAdvantage & were told that all miles were secure.

I am hoping AA will sell billions of more miles to Citi to offer for even more lucrative credit card signups in the future!

American Airlines Files for Ch.11 Bankruptcy Protection

This has been expected for a while…From what I have read, most do not believe it should have any impact on passengers. I sure hope not as I have a ton of AAdvantage miles in my account and recently reached AA Gold.
I wrote about it One of My Mileage Goals Reached- AA Lifetime Status 


I just saw this article on the main page of Yahoo:


American Airlines files for Ch. 11 protection

APAP – 16 mins ago

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — The parent companies of American Airlines and its regional affiliate American Eagle are filing for Ch. 11 bankruptcy protection.
AMR Corp. and AMR Eagle Holding Corp. said Tuesday that they filed voluntary petitions to reorganize, saying it’s in the best interest of the companies and its shareholders.
American says it sought protection to reduce its costs and debt to remain competitive in the airline industry.
American was the only major U.S. airline that didn’t file for bankruptcy protection after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
American says labor-contract rules force it to spend at least $600 million more than other airlines.

American Airlines Twitter Gifts

A couple of weeks back I tweeted a blog post about American Airlines to Twitter. This led to a converstaion with @AmericanAir, American Airlines official Twitter Channel. After writing back and forth with them I jokingly (kind of) asked if they had any AA souvenirs to send a big fan. They immediately wrote back that they would check to see if they had anything & soon after direct messaged me asking for my mailing address.


I was wondering what they could possibly be sending me. It couldn’t be an AA t-shirt since they didn’t ask for my size and I also figured that it wasn’t a gift of AAdvantage miles. I was hoping it would be one of those small airplace models with the airline’s logo on the side…


When I got home from work the other day, a package from FedEx had arrived from AA. I excitedly opened it up and received three items.
1- AA baseball cap
2- AA red pen
3- Two AA wings sticker patches

a white hat and pen on a carpet

I want to thank @AmericanAir for the nice gifts!


To reach American Airlines through Twitter , you can write to:
-Customer Service- @American Air
-AAdvantage- @AAdvantage
-Europe- @AAEurope

American Airlines Reaching Gold Status- Bonus Choices

a red and blue logo with a bird
I reached AA Lifetime Gold about a month ago. For reaching Gold status I was given 8- 500 Mile Upgrades. It seemed like it may have been better to wait until after the new AAdvantage program changes to cross the million mile mark. Starting December 1 2011 AA will be giving 35,000 miles as a bonus.

I definitely value 35,000 miles more than the 8 upgrades so I decided to call the AAdvantage customer service desk and ask if anything could be done. I was transferred to another operator that was more than happpy to switch the upgrades for miles!
She said to wait 24-48 hours for the miles to post.
I checked my account when I woke up and was happy to see the miles in my account less than 10 hours after I had called!
Now that is service!


American Airlines eShopping Bonus Miles Promo

a close-up of a coupon
From now until 12/31/11 AA eShopping is offering a holiday bonus for shopping with any online retail partner:

  • Spend $500 earn 500 bonus miles
  • Spend $1000 earn 1000 bonus miles 
  • You can also earn double AAdvantage miles for shopping from a list of select retailer

This isn’t the most generous bonus offer but extra miles are always nice if you can reach the required spend on purchases you planned to make anyways…

Click here to register for the AAdvantage eShopping mall: https://www.aadvantageeshopping.com/userlogin.aspx

Congratulations E-Mail For Reaching AA Lifetime Gold

a close-up of a letter

I received an e-mail today from American Airlines congratulating me for reaching Lifetime Gold status!

My AA account was updated last week to show that I was Gold but it was nice to see a letter stating that I now had lifetime status.
I look forward to receiving my AAdvantage Gold membership card! Hopefully I will also get a couple of AAdvantage Gold luggage tags like I have read people received in the past but the e-mail does not mention anything about that…

One of My Mileage Goals Reached- AA Lifetime Status

I finally have Lifetime Gold status on American Airlines!!! 

I didn’t think that I would get there when changes to the AAdvantage program were announced in August. I did a couple of things to make it happen just in time.

I transferred a bunch of Starwood points to AA miles and then had my wife apply for the Starwood 30,000 point promo over the summer. I then linked my wife’s Starwood account to mine and transferred her miles to my account to turn into AA miles. This got me within around 130,000 miles. I had already received two 75,000 bonuses from Citi AA cards this year & read that Citi AA cards were only churnable every 17 months give or take. I decided to take a chance and apply again and was instantly approved within a few minutes for a Citi AA Visa! I then decided to open a new browser and apply for a Citi AA Amex card. I crossed my fingers and what do ya know, I was approved!

I did not have much time to reach the spend needed to earn each 75,000 bonus before the AA Advantage program changed. The AA Visa has a $1500 spend requirement, the AA Amex $4000. I ended up “charging” $1000 to myself/ my wife on each card for free through Amazon Payments, used an app called Square to charge $3000 to myself (which cost $83) and then actually used the cards to pay some bills.

Hopefully Gold status will be useful when I decide to fly with some of the AA miles I have earned!