TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands What's up with AA frequent flyer miles?

Heh, what's going on with AA frequent flyer miles/points? Back in the days, when I had to walk to school up hill both ways in the snow, I could use the AA points to send my whole crew roundtrip to the BVI.

AA use to post your "last month" mile earnings on around the tenth of each month. Now, it's the end of the April, and still no postings for March. I'm thinking about switching over to a Basspro credit card. At least, I get a free towel when I sign up.

Odd. Mine is usually always posted on the 21st of the month. Same date each of the 3 months so far this year.

AA miles used to provide me more value than Delta by far. But a recent check I didn’t see any cheap FF flights. Still got some great deals last year.

As for BassPro, cashier begged me to get a BassPro card when i bought a life preserver recently. I told her this $30 preserver would end up costing me $3000 in interest. She seemed disappointed in my thought that credit cards were evil. She said basspro was cheap for basspro purchases. I think she gets a cut of each app submitted/card issued.

As for FF credit cards, those AA and DL miles come at very high interest if you don’t pay that balance every month. And that’s what they are “banking on” pun intended.

We have used AA FF miles very effectively, including business class tickets down this coming December. I get a statement every month. With the new Miami flights, they are far and away the most useful miles to the BVI.

I'm still trying to work out this "loyalty points"BS on AA. I'm a million mile flyer with lots of FF miles and my loyalty points total is....0.

Not positive as this "improvement" is vague, but I think the loyalty points are based on your flights in a 12 month period and are used for determination of status (Gold Platinum, etc.). FF miles are what you have unused in the bank at any given time.

To try and simplify the program if it’s possible. AA’s program runs 1 Apr to 1 Apr each year for status (loyalty points) You however accrue the loyalty points toward status 1 Mar to 1 Mar. This means that on 1 Mar each year your loyalty points drop to zero until your Mar statement posts sometime in Apr. Your FF miles don’t go away and continue to accrue normally. Your loyalty points as of 28 Feb will determine your FF status starting 1 APR for the next year. Because of the one month offset you will show zero loyalty points in the month of Mar. in addition you get paid 10,000 bonus loyalty points when you hit the 50,000 and 90,000 point level in a given year.
It is worth it to reach basic platinum status of 75,000 points. It vastly improves your seat selection options. With the first 10,000 point bonus you need 65,000 earned points. You can be creative on how to get there especially if you have some big spend items. If a policy limits how much you can charge as a deposit ect.. it’s almost always negotiable if you agree to pay part of the their card fee. Many things like Medicare premiums can be paid by card at zero cost.
As far as using FF miles to book flights I purchased quite a view tickets at under 20,000 points roundtrip from CLT to STT. Here is a pro tip. Once you purchase a FF ticket it can be cancelled unlike a normal ticket at zero cost to you. Check back every week or so on the mileage pricing for the flights you are booked on. If it drops cancel and rebook! One roundtrip flight I took last year dropped from 38,000 to 16,000 points. I rebooked twice as it dropped. One last thing to mention. If you have the advantage credit card booking hotels and rental cars through the AA site can be very lucrative for FF points. I am on a current two day hotel stay that netted me 15,000 points. Pricing is the same as if you book directly and you will get an offer for status with Avis after about a 35,000 spend on the AA advantage card.
To summarize FF points don’t expire and are how you buy tickets. Loyalty points reset to zero each March and determine your status for the next year. That’s all loyalty points are used for.

We use a Bank of America Travel Rewards Cash Back card and pay it off as soon as we charge to it and let the point build up. Points vary depending on the type of purchase and you can use the points as a statement credit to pay towards any balance before paying it off.
2500 point gets a $ 25.00 statement credit.
As an example, I just booked a slip at Scrub island for $ 240.50 and I got 396.97 points for it. Basically for every $ 1500.00 spent you get $ 25.00 to use as a statement credit. Not the best return by any means but it is better than a fish hook in your foot for sure.

AA has started 'dynamic' frequent flier mile tickets. This means that it is not necessarily 30,000 roundtrip, it's going to be dynamic based on demand for that flight/time period. It's usually best to try to book your frequent flyer tickets the moment that date becomes available (11 months in advance). Otherwise, you have to constantly check your flight and wait patiently for it to drop down to the usual mileage. That may or may not happen. In addition, the dollar cost for taxes/fees is all over the map depending on which airports you are flying through, or if you are on one of their partner airlines.

Also, they changed their points so that you only get max points for a flight if booked through their website.

My mileage off my AA credit card only posts when the credit card statement is issued. My date is 9th of each month and the miles are in my account by about the 11th.

I gave up finding frequent flyer tickets for next trip in June. Right now my flight SAN to EIS through Miami is 150,000 points for one roundtrip!!! Basically the same points if I look 11 months ahead, but only 45,000 points if I went through STT