American Airlines’ AAdvantage miles have some great perks and distinctions between the other programs. I think AA is the most rewarding airline right now to flyers. Racking up points isn’t a problem. How do you use AAdvantage miles? Or better yet, how should you use them?
First, let me start by giving you the main ways to collect AA miles. Right now flying is big. Oddly enough, I have no interest in paying for a flight on most airlines because I don’t get enough miles or I don’t like the program. But right now they have some great promotions. I wrote here how flying to Europe and back could give you enough miles to fly somewhere more exotic for a cheaper price.
Also, miles running “evangelist” Ben, who writes One Mile At A Time did a great thorough and detailed post on miles running here.
I also wrote about the awesome American Airlines credit card sign up bonus and how you can get it twice here. This, my friends, will be gone one day soon and you shouldn’t miss out on it. The only other real way to get AA miles from a credit card is by transferring them from SPG via their Amex card. People rave about the card but it’s one of the few rewards cards I don’t have.
AA has a great mileage program. Low-cost miles and very low fees. Even on their partners, like Quantas, that charge very high fuel surcharges, AA will let you fly with them and only charge a small fee for taxes. (This is with the exception of British Airways). They also have great availability, I find. These reasons are why I tend to compare AA to Continental/United. In my mind, they are the only two airlines.
A few routes are cheaper on AA and a few routes are cheaper on Continental/United (though usually not by much) but there are a few distinct differences. AA has excited a few people with the perks of Executive Platinum status and recently some great promotions. In some ways they have been innovators in the miles programs. Ironically, the ones who introduced stopovers on award flights have now mostly taken it away. But I love being able to book one-way flights. Others, like US Airways, need to get with the ball, because I want to book round-trips and therefore almost never use my USA miles.
Unfortunately their search engine does not include any of their partners. This isn’t but so bad because they have good phone staff, they themselves fly all over and expertflyer.com is my go to. But look at their award chart and call after you know where you want to go.
One thing about AA’s mileage chart that can either hurt or help you is that they don’t break up their chart into as many categories. That is to say, they don’t distinguish between northern and southern Africa or northern and Central America and South America are broken up into only 2 categories. Or for example, Australia and New Zealand are in the same category with all the Pacific islands.
This might work for you if you’re going to Peru for example because it is lumped into the same category as Belize which is considerably closer to mainland U.S. However, a different miles program might be better suited if you were going to Belize.
Also, AA tends to be cheaper when you’re going between two distances in the same category. And think about this: Africa is a category and it only costs 10,000 miles to fly between two points. What? Europe is smaller, more easily accessible and costs more miles to travel within. How in the world is traveling from Morocco, which is easily accessible (for 10 Euros on Ryanair), to Mauritius (a tiny, exotic island way out in the ocean on the south east side of Africa) only 10,000 miles?
For Europe, most of South America, and “Asia Zone 1”, they have off-season prices. 25k for Asia and 20k for the other two. Basically off-peak is for places that have really cold winters. If you happen to want to go to Europe or the cold part of Asia in winter and southern South America in their winter, this is a total win for you. However, sometimes it’s cheaper to use continental in peak season but by a small amount.
I have AA gift cards, AA gift certificates and an AA voucher thanks to their customer service so obviously I’ll be flying with them for awhile. But honestly people, I think I’ll be flying with them for a long time. I believe in them and hope they don’t get bought out by USA!
But to be fair, here are the things that draw me to CO/United:
they still allow stopovers on round-trips and their relationship with Chase. Their credit cards alone aren’t better than AA’s but the fact that you can transfer from Chase points to CO/United is huge! They are giving out Chase UR points like candy right now. (Continental’s search engine is awesome but that doesn’t sway me much).
Overall, it would take a lot of bumped flights on CO/United and some really good promotions to top where I’m sitting with AA. I’m AA through and through. I really only see one competitor and AA is outshining them in the miles world. My advice for those of you who want to be rewarded for your flying, is to fly AA but keep a fair amount of CO/United miles in your back pocket. After all, they are different alliances that fly different routes and places. How to use your miles is the easy part: just call. How you should use your miles is up to you. American Airlines partners with some great airlines and allows you to go to some exotic locations with few miles and barely any fees.
The AA awards chart you see, including the counties in each category can be found here: http://www.aa.com/i18n/disclaimers/aadvantageAllPartnerChart.jsp
