Posts Tagged With: American AAdvantage

Trip Report: Two Weeks Down Under

Posted on January 10, 2020 by 2btravel

Trip Report: Two Weeks Down Under
Flight Review: Qantas B747-400 San Francisco – Sydney
Lounge Review: Qantas Business Class Lounge, Sydney
Flight Review: Qantas A330-300 Sydney – Auckland
Lodging Review: Holiday Inn Auckland Airport
Lodging Review: The Pavilions Hotel, Christchurch
Our Time in Christchurch
Lodging Review: Hilton Queenstown Resort & Spa
Our Time in Queenstown including Doubtful Sound Tour
Lodging Review: Avani Metropolis, Auckland
Our Time in Auckland
Lodging Review: Oceans Mooloolaba
Our Time on the Sunshine Coast
Lodging Review: Brisbane Marriott
Flight Review: Qantas B787-9 Brisbane – Los Angeles

Each year my friends and I try to take a two week vacation in the fall. We have a system that whoever had the birthday ending in 5 or 0 that year gets to pick the location. That’s served us well and covers 6 years out of any decade. This year the birthday girl decided on spending most of our time exploring New Zealand with a few days on the end on the beaches of Australia.

That decision was made late in 2018 so our first task was finding business class award space on the longhaul segments for two of us (one doesn’t mind flying coach). We were fine buying our positioning flights as long as we could lock in business class for those 14 hour flights!

I was looking for award space on American, Qantas and United as well as keeping an eye out for space on Air New Zealand. I knew that American was pretty stingy on longhaul award space in premium cabins but they look positively generous compared to what Air New Zealand typically opens up. As luck would have it I found three business class award seats from Brisbane (near the Australian beaches we wanted to visit) back to Los Angeles for the last Wednesday in October. That was perfect so we snagged those even though we didn’t have our outbound tickets yet. I used my miles for the birthday girl’s return ticket which cost 80,000 American AAdvantage miles + $81.83 for each ticket. However, thanks to my Citibank AAdvantage MasterCard I get a rebate of up to 10,000 miles each year so the net cost was 150K miles. I considered using 55,000 Alaska Mileage Plan miles per ticket instead but our friend who lives in Chicago was using her AA miles to get one of the tickets and I know that sometimes Alaska has access to one less award ticket than oneworld alliance airlines and I just wanted to make things easier by having the two of us on a single PNR. I bought a United domestic flight from LA to Denver to Memphis for my return flight and my Chicago friend bought a United ticket home as well. However, when United made the fall schedule adjustments, I would land in Denver too late to catch the afternoon flight back to Memphis so they re-routed me through Chicago. While I was stuck on a one-cabin plane for the Chicago-Memphis leg, at least I got to fly back with my friend as far as Chicago.

After buying the return flights we sweated for a couple of weeks until Qantas opened up two business class seats on their 747 from San Francisco to Sydney. The seats were available two weeks and one day before the return flight. That couldn’t have worked out any better for us. My friend from Chicago and I were even able to include positioning flights with the cost of our tickets: 80,000 American AAdvantage miles + $28.20 in fees

Long haul flights: the green line indicates my outbound flight while the blue is my return flight.

Continue reading →

Categories: Award Travel, Hilton, Hotel, IHG, New Zealand, Oceania, OneWorld, Other Hotels, Qantas | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Earn AAdvantage Miles When Buying Event Tickets

Posted on November 22, 2019 by 2btravel

Determining which card to use to buy event tickets such as concerts or sporting events can sometimes be easy or sometimes be hard. For example, American Express often has pre-sale events where you must use an Amex card to make those purchases. Other times MasterCard is running a promotion and you must use one of their cards. But when there are no obvious choices, what card do you typically use? Here are some options that come to mind:

  • Citi Double Cash, Premier or Prestige, earning 2 Thank You Points per dollar
  • Barclays ArrivalPlus, earning two miles per dollar which can be used to erase travel purchases
  • Chase Freedom Unlimited, earning 1.5 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar
  • any card where you’re trying to meet the minimum spend

Now American Airlines wants to help you earn AAdvantage miles on top of whatever currency you’re earning with your credit card. They’ve teamed up with Vivid Seats, a ticket re-seller, to give you a minimum of 3 AA miles per dollar spent on the base ticket price.

As an example, for an upcoming NBA game here in Memphis, the cheapest tickets ranged from $10-14. For 2 x $10 tickets, you could earn 60 AA miles, or 3 miles per dollar. For 2 x $12 tickets, your $48 would earn up to 70 miles or at bit over 3 miles per dollar. It appears all mileage amounts are rounded up.

While this may not be an opportunity for everyone, it’s certainly worth a look the next time you’re looking for seats at an event in your area!

Categories: Advice, American Airlines, Shopping | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Hyatt and American Airlines Join Forces

Posted on May 14, 2019 by 2btravel

Hyatt and American Airlines have teamed up to offer some reciprocal benefits. If you have status in either program you should have received an email stating what your benefit is. I’m a low-level elite with Hyatt, called a Discoverist, thanks to my Hyatt credit card. Here’s the email I received:

It’s hard to read but the only benefit I get is that in addition to earning Hyatt points I can also earn American frequent flyer miles. All I need to do is to click on the box and log into my account. That takes me to this page:

Where I can link my accounts. I haven’t done this yet as there’s a note indicating the names on the two accounts must match exactly and mine don’t. My Hyatt account has my “called by” first name (like the vast majority of my credit cards) whereas my American account has my legal first name to match my photo ID. So I’m checking with Hyatt to see if this will be an issue or not.

But it’s very easy and those with higher status either with Hyatt or American should enjoy even greater benefits. What kind of offer did you receive?

Categories: American Airlines, Hotel, Hyatt, OneWorld | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Using frequent flyer miles doesn’t mean it’s free

Posted on May 6, 2018 by 2btravel

My hometown of Nashville recently gained a non-stop flight to London Heathrow on British Airways which is nice in so many ways and many folks may think that’s a great way to redeem their frequent flyer miles…but is it really?

Let’s say you have 60,000 American AAdvantage miles and are ready to splurge on a trip to London. You log into your AAdvantage account on aa.com, plug in dates that will work for you, check the Redeem miles box and hit Search.


The website returns the full week of results.


Continue reading →

Categories: Advice, American Airlines, British Airways, OneWorld | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Earn 1000 AA Miles for Hyatt House or Hyatt Place stays

Posted on April 28, 2018 by 2btravel

American Airlines and Hyatt are teaming up to allow you to earn 1000 miles for each stay at a Hyatt Place or Hyatt House property between February 20 and June 30, 2018. You must register by this Monday, April 30th. The date of your stay is determined by your checkout date.

When you check into a Hyatt Place or Hyatt House, you must choose one of these options:

  • Earn 1000 AAdvantage® bonus miles plus the standard 500 AAdvantage® miles for your stay OR
  • Earn 1000 AAdvantage® bonus miles + World of Hyatt Base Points for your eligible spend

The terms and conditions further state:

Back-to-back stays within one 24-hour period at a single participating hotel are considered one stay. Only one (1) check-in/check-out permitted per stay. Please allow four to six weeks after your qualifying stay for bonus miles to be posted to your American Advantage account.

If you didn’t get the email about this promotion you can register on the World of Hyatt website.

Categories: American Airlines, Hotel, Hotel Promos, Hyatt, OneWorld | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

New benefits, slightly higher fee for the Citi AA Platinum Card

Posted on April 28, 2018 by 2btravel

The Citibank AAdvantage® Visa was the first rewards credit card I ever had and I’ve held on to it through various iterations including a switch to MasterCard for over 20 years. But it’s one I keep for the benefits instead of for its earning power.

To me the primary benefits are a free checked bag on domestic flights and the 10% rebate on miles when purchasing an award ticket (up to 10,000 miles per year). But at present the card earns 2x miles on all American Airlines purchases and 1x miles everywhere else. While I do have a couple of small recurring charges on this card, I spend less than $50 per month on it.

Starting July 22, 2018 it seems that Citi will attempt to get me to spend more on this card by offering 2x miles at restaurants and gas stations as well as a $100 AA flight voucher if I spend $20K or more during my cardmember year and renew the card. They’ll also raise the annual fee from $95 to $99 which seems…cheap.

My reaction: well, it’s better than nothing. But if Citi was hoping to drive me to use this card more often, this is not going to do it. I already get 3x Ultimate Rewards points per dollar at restaurants through my Chase Sapphire Reserve card. I get 3x of Citi’s own Thank You Points per dollar at gas stations via the Citi Premier card. Thanks to my Barclay’s American Airlines AAviator card I can earn that $100 voucher for $20K spend, get the free checked bag AND, thanks to having converted that card over from the US Airways card, I get 10K miles bonus each year I renew.

The only reason I keep this card is for how it’s helping my credit rating’s average age of accounts score and the 10% mileage rebate though that only helps in years when I redeem AA miles. And it’s frustrating to me when I want to book an international trip as soon as the window opens but AA hasn’t released ANY award seats from Memphis to an AA hub so I have to buy a positioning flight.

So, nice try, Citibank but let’s see if you can do better.

Categories: American Airlines, Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select World Elite MasterCard, Citibank, Credit Cards | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Earn AA Miles for Stand Up To Cancer Donation

Posted on November 28, 2017 by 2btravel

From now through December 12, make a donation of $25 or more to Stand Up To Cancer and receive 25 AAdvantage miles per dollar donated.  If you use a Mastercard for your donation (like the Citibank AA card or the Barclaycard AA card) Mastercard will match up to $1,000,000 in donations.

If you received an email from American Airlines with this offer, just click on the link in your email to be taken to the donation page or you can just click here.

 

Categories: American Airlines | Tags: | Leave a comment

Multiple 100K Mile Giveaways

Posted on September 16, 2017 by 2btravel

Three different airlines are offering a chance at 100,000 miles + $2500 cash when you register through their shopping portals.  If you choose to do additional shopping through these portals you can earn more entries into the contest. Continue reading →

Categories: Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, United | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

20% Bonus (or more) Converting SPG Points to American Airlines

Posted on September 3, 2017 by 2btravel

Starpoints, the currency of the SPG Hotel Chain, are usually considered the most valuable transferable points/miles currency out there. That’s because not only can the points be used at SPG hotels like Radisson, St. Regis, W Hotels, Westin, etc. but they can be transferred at a 1:3 ratio to Marriott for use at their hotels. In addition, SPG points can be transferred to a host of airlines at a 1:1 ratio – but when you transfer 20,000 points at one time, SPG gives you a 5000 mile bonus. Just take a look at all these partners!

From now through October 15, there is a promotion between SPG and American airlines where when you transfer points to AA, a 20% bonus will apply after the conversion. So if you transfer 20K points to AA, SPG gives you 5000 miles and you end up with 25K AA miles. Then a 20% bonus applies and you get another 5000 miles.

In addition, for each 100K miles transferred during this promotion, you get a 10K AAdvantage mile bonus. Now this must be done in multiple transactions over multiple days because SPG limits you to 79K points converted in a single day. So if on Day 1 you convert 60K points (resulting in 75K AA miles before the bonus) and on Day 2 you convert 20K points (resulting in 25K AA miles before the bonus) you’d not only get the 20% bonus each day (15K on Day 1 and 5K on Day 2), you’d then get an additional 10K bonus resulting in a total of 130K AA miles.

There are minimum transfer amounts based on your SPG status:

  • Preferred (basic) members have a 2500 point minimum
  • Gold members have a 1500 point minimum
  • Platinum members do not have a minimum

If you’re in need of AA miles this is a great way to boost your balance quickly. The transfers are not instant. Research over the past couple of years seems to indicate it takes a minimum of 2 days and perhaps as many as 4 days for the miles to show up in your AA account. But you don’t have to wait for the miles to show up to initiate another transfer. So with the example above you could transfer the 60K points today and the 20K points tomorrow even though you wouldn’t see the miles reflected in your account until mid-week.

If you’re ready to transfer points, follow the link in the email you should have received from American Airlines or click here.

Categories: American Airlines, American Express, Credit Card Promos, Credit Cards, SPG Amex | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Buy AA miles for a Penny Apiece

Posted on September 2, 2017 by 2btravel

If you own one of the American Airlines Aviator credit cards issued by Barclays, check your account to see if you’ve been targeted for the new Flight Cents program. Flight Cents is a program where your purchase is rounded up to the nearest dollar and you earn one AAdvantage mile per cent.

So if your purchase comes to $17.46, your credit card statement will reflect $18 and you get 71 AAdvantage miles for your purchase: 17 for the purchase and 54 miles purchased for the 54 cents that were rounded up.

This pilot program runs October 1 – March 31 and you must register your account by September 30th by selecting the max number of dollars that can be rounded up in a month with the maximum being $500, which would net 50K miles.

This will certainly make me look at using my Aviator card more frequently during this time period despite the fact that my largest stash of airline miles is currently with American.

Were you targeted for this or a similar offer?

H/T: View From The Wing

Categories: AAdvantage Aviator, American Airlines, Barclays, Credit Card Promos, Credit Cards | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

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