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If you’re looking to stock up on AAdvantage miles, now’s a great time to do so. American Airlines just launched a new buy miles promotion, giving AAdvantage members the opportunity to save up to 40% off and earn up to 10,000 bonus miles through May 31. When maximized, you can buy miles as low as 1.80 cents apiece.
First, Why Should I Ever Buy Miles?
Let’s get one thing out of the way up front: buying miles makes sense only for certain travelers. It’s obviously much better to earn AA miles for free through credit card sign-up bonuses. If you’re looking for good options, the Citi / AAdvantage Platinum Select World Elite Mastercard is offering a 60,000-mile sign-up bonus for spending $3,000 in the first three months. You can also score 50,000 AAdvantage miles after your first purchase on the Barclaycard AAdvantage Aviator Red World Elite Mastercard.
However, if you’ve tapped out your credit card options for generating AAdvantage miles — like many of us at TPG have — you’ll want to consider buying miles for the right redemptions. What are those redemptions? Generally high-cost domestic flights you can score for cheap on miles, domestic itineraries bookable using reduced mileage awards and business/first class international awards.
Here’s what you can score with this buy miles promotion:
All of these rates are before factoring in the 10% mileage rebate that AAdvantage Platinum Select and Aviator Red cardholders get, up to 10,000 miles each year. This rebate reduces the net price of these award flights, leading to an even better effective purchase rate.
Details of This Promotion
The regular price for buying miles from American is 3.17 cents per mile ($29.50 per 1,000 miles, plus a 7.5% federal excise tax). With this promotion, your price will drop to 1.80 cents per mile if you max out the offer.
You’ll get the maximum 40% discount and 10,000 bonus miles — netting the 1.80 cents per mile purchase rate — when you purchase 150,000 miles. But, even when buying just 51,000 miles, you’ll get a 30% discount, dropping the rate to just 2.28 cents per mile. That’s a decent rate for such a small purchase of miles.
Here are the breakpoints of this promotion’s bonus chart:
- 4,000 miles for $151 (3.78 cents per mile)
- 11,000 miles for $344 (3.13 cents per mile)
- 21,000 miles for $596 (2.84 cents per mile)
- 26,000 miles for $690 (2.65 cents per mile)
- 51,000 miles for $1,162 (2.28 cents per mile)
- 101,000 miles + 5,000 bonus miles for $2,112 (1.99 cents per mile)
- 150,000 miles + 10,000 bonus miles for $2,884 (1.80 cents per mile)
How to Buy AA Miles
To take advantage of the promotion, follow these steps:
Keep in mind that the usual restrictions for purchasing American miles apply to this promotion, including the following:
Which Credit Card to Use
American Airlines processes mileage transfers and purchases directly (instead of going through Points.com), so this spending will code as an airfare purchase. That means you’ll earn bonus points if you use a card with a travel or airfare category bonus. By far the best option in this category is The Platinum Card from American Express, which now earns 5x on airfare. During last year’s buy miles promotion, several TPG readers reported receiving this category bonus on their purchases.
Other top credit cards to consider include the Chase Sapphire Reserve, with 3x Ultimate Rewards points on general travel; the Premier Rewards Gold Card from American Express, with 3x Membership Rewards points on airfare; the Citi ThankYou Premier Card and the Citi Prestige, with 3x ThankYou points on air travel; and the Chase Sapphire Preferredwith 2x Ultimate Rewards points on general travel.
Source: thepointsguy.com