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On Wednesday, American Airlines launched a new buy miles promotion. Now through February 8, you’ll get 10% off the purchase rate of miles if you purchase at least 20,000 miles. Plus, you’ll earn up to 42,500 bonus miles. When maximized, you can buy miles as low as 2.02 cents per mile. But, what’s unique about this deal is that you can buy a small amount of miles for just 2.13 cents per mile, making it great for topping off your account.
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 three months. Even better, you can score 60,000 AA 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 are — 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. Those rebates reduce 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 2.02 cents per mile if you max out the offer.
You’ll get the maximum 42.5% bonus — netting the 2.02 cents per mile purchase rate — when you purchase 100,000 miles. But, even when buying just 40,000 miles, you’ll get 37.5% bonus miles and the 10% discount, dropping the rate to just 2.13 cents per mile. That’s a great rate for such a small purchase of miles. This type of purchase is great for topping off your account for redemptions like business class awards to Europe.
Here are the sweet spots of this promotion’s bonus chart:
- 20,000 + 7,000 bonus miles for $601 total (2.23 cents per mile)
- 40,000 + 15,000 bonus miles for $1,172 total (2.13 cents per mile)
- 60,000 + 22,500 bonus miles for $1,742 total (2.11 cents per mile)
- 75,000 + 30,000 bonus miles for $2,171 total (2.07 cents per mile)
- 100,000 + 42,500 bonus miles for $2,884 total (2.02 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:
What Credit Card to Use
American Airlines processes mileage transfers and purchases directly (instead of going through Points.com), so this spending should count as airfare. 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, and during last year’s buy miles promotion, several TPG readers reported receiving this category bonus on their purchases. So that could make this a really great deal.
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