TravelingForMiles.com may receive commission from card issuers. Some or all of the card offers that appear on TravelingForMiles.com are from advertisers and may impact how and where card products appear on the site. TravelingForMiles.com does not include all card companies or all available card offers.
Some links to products and travel providers on this website will earn Traveling For Miles a commission which helps contribute to the running of the site – I’m very grateful to anyone who uses these links but their use is entirely optional. The compensation does not impact how and where products appear on this site and does not impact reviews that are published. For more details please see the advertising disclosure found at the bottom of every page.
The American Airlines website is changing in layout and i content and it looks as if some of the first changes have been rolled out in the past 24 hours.
There aren’t any glaringly obvious changes to the site on the homepage (at least not at the time of writing) but the “your account” page certainly looks a little different.
Apologies for all the redactions but one can’t be too careful!
I don’t have a screenshot of my account page that was on view a couple of days ago so you’ll just have to trust me when I say that this looks a lot clearer – for a start it’s a lot easier to see where to find your latest activity and your upcoming trips are staring you in the face.
That last thing can especially useful when American Airlines fails to issue a ticket you though it had issued 24 hours ago:
Under the old layout I may not have noticed that while now I know to call American as soon as I finish this post.
Bonus Promotions Added
The changes to the account page aren’t just visual as American Airlines has also added a “Promotions” section under the account holder’s information summary.
These promotions are apparently tailored to individuals although, from what I can see, they’re quite broad in nature and most don’t appear to be very specific to my circumstances.
I have 4 promotions showing right now:
- Earn bonus AAdvantage Miles through investments with Betterment
- Earn 50 bonus miles for installing the AAdvantage eShopping button
- Earn bonus points for renting with National/Alamo
Unless I’m mistaken those were all promotions that were available before the makeover.
What wasn’t available before the makeover was my 4th promotion:
Now this promotion looks a little more interesting.
Earn 5,000 Bonus AAdvantage Miles
It looks like American Airlines has taken a leaf out IHG’s playbook a come up with a smaller (and less rewarding) version of the IHG Accelerate promotions we see appear each quarter.
Here’s what my “challenge” offers:
Earn up to 5,000 AAdvantage® bonus miles when you register and complete these qualifying activities in any order through September 30, 2018:
- Make any purchase with AAdvantage® eShopping℠
- Dine-in or carry out with AAdvantage® Dining℠
- Book and stay at a hotel at bookaahotels.com
- Rent and drive a car at aa.com/cars
- Fly on an American Airlines marketed and operated flight
The more activities you complete, the more you’ll earn:
- 1 activity = 50 bonus miles
- 2 activities = 250 bonus miles
- 3 activities = 1,000 bonus miles
- 4 activities = 2,500 bonus miles
- 5 activities = 5,000 bonus miles
Rules:
- Registration for the offer is required
- Activity that occurs before you are registered for the offer won’t count toward the offer
- Each qualifying activity can only be completed once to count toward the offer
AAdvantage® eShopping℠
- Participants must transact and earn miles at participating AAdvantage® eShopping℠ merchants during the offer period
- Available to U.S. Residents only
AAdvantage® Dining℠
- Participants must dine and earn miles with participating restaurants during the offer period
- Available to U.S. Residents only
bookaahotels.com
- Participants must book and complete stay during the offer period
aa.com/cars
- Participants must pick-up and drop off rental during offer period
American Airlines flight
- Eligible tickets for this offer are purchased, published fares for flights marketed and operated by American
- At least 1 eligible flight segment must be flown during the offer period
- Applies to all members
- Tickets may be booked through any source
Thoughts On The 5,000 Miles Promotion
Two of my challenges are only available to AAdvantage accounts registered in the US so, based only on what I can see, it’s unclear whether the overall promotion is only open to US AAdvantage members or if members from outside the US will simply have different challenges – hopefully it’s the latter.
Region issues aside this should be a relatively easy 5,000 AAdvantage Miles for anyone who flys with American with any kind of frequency and road warriors could have this wrapped up in a matter of days.
One word of caution: 5,000 AAdvantage Miles isn’t a lot of miles (I value them at around $62.50) so make sure that you’re not overpaying for car hire or hotels when booking through the American Airlines sites – use comparison sites (like Booking.com) to see what the same bookings would cost if you weren’t using American Airlines.
American Is Offering Bigger Bonuses If You Fly A Lot
I haven’t been able to find any mention of this on the American Airlines website but Doctor of Credit has reported that passengers who fly a significant number of miles are set to be offered a choice of new bonuses.
Flyers who earn 300,000 Elite Qualifying Miles in 2018 will be given three bonuses from which to choose (one):
- Platinum status for a friend
- 2 additional systemwide upgrades
- 40,000 AAdvantage Miles
According to DoC this is only an offer for 2018 and the systemwide bonuses for reaching 150,000 and 200,000 EQM are still in place – the offer will appear in your account when you reach the 200,000 EQM milestone.
Thoughts On The 300k EQM Bonuses
If you fly enough to earn 300,000 EQM I have no idea why you would choose 40,000 AAdvantage Miles as your bonus (you probably already have more AAdvantage Miles than you know what to do with) but the other two options may be useful.
I suspect that most flyers who rack up 300,000 EQM probably do so by flying a lot of Premium Cabins so the systemwide upgrades will only really be of use for the limited number of routes on which American offers a 3-cabin First Class option…..or for upgrading a traveling companion.
Gifting Platinum status sounds like a nice idea but this may not be as useful as it sounds.
If you fly enough to earn 300,000 miles there’s a good chance you’ve been invited to join American’s Concierge Key program and some Concierge Key members can already gift Executive Platinum status.
I guess CK members could always find someone else to whom they can gift Platinum status but the option is definitely a lot less useful if your partner doesn’t need the status.
Even if you don’t have CK status (or are a CK who can’t gift EXP status) the ability to gift Platinum Status isn’t as useful as it once may have been.
Apart from the fact that Platinum is now the 4th tier status level of the AAdvantage program (so not that great any more) American Airlines already bestows your status on your traveling companion (as long as they’re on the same reservation as you) so they get the benefit of your Executive Platinum status anyway.
Unless the person on whom you bestow Platinum status does a lot of flying without you their new status will be of limited use to them.
Bottom Line
It’s good to see American Airlines try to be a little innovative with its promotions (although I’m a little underwhelmed right now) and it’s good to see the airline reward those who clearly spend a lot of money with American.
It’s even better that they’re not rewarding the big flyers simply by reducing what they offer the rest of us (that’s been American’s go-to move of late).
Did anyone get any interesting offers posted to their AAdvantage account or did we all get the same offer?
