American AAdvantage Loyalty Points Program Guide

The loyalty program of American Airlines was changed as of 2022. The concept of elite qualified miles and elite qualified dollars was eliminated by the Fort Worth based airline.

In order to earn AAdvantage elite status, you have to account for how much you fly with American and how much you engage with American's partners. If you want, you can earn top tier status through credit card spending. I think that this is a good thing because it is a radical departure from the previous system.

Everything you need to know about the loyalty points program is covered in this post.

Earn American AAdvantage elite status with Loyalty Points

The American AAdvantage elite status is determined by how many points you accumulate. One Loyalty Point is earned for every A mile earned. The requirements for AAdvantage elite status are listed below.

• AAdvantage Gold status requires 30,000 Loyalty Points
• AAdvantage Platinum status requires 75,000 Loyalty Points
• AAdvantage Platinum Pro status requires 125,000 Loyalty Points
• AAdvantage Executive Platinum status requires 200,000 Loyalty Points

There are still qualification requirements for American's invitation-only concierge key status. We have reason to believe that some non-flying activities may be considered in order to earn Concierge Key.

Status is earned between the beginning of March of a particular year and the end of February of the next year, and is valid through March 31 of the year after that. Status isn't based on the traditional calendar year.

You might be wondering what qualifies for loyalty points. If you spend $200,000 on a credit card, you will get Executive Platinum status, but if you buy 200,000 AAdvantage miles, you won't. Let's take a closer look at those details.

How to earn Loyalty Points for flying American Airlines

Flying with American Airlines is one of the most popular ways to earn loyalty points. When flying an airline.

• You earn 5x base miles per dollar spent, all of which qualify as Loyalty Points
• Elite status bonuses also count as Loyalty Points, ranging from 40% to 120%; Gold members get a 40% bonus, Platinum members get a 60% bonus, Platinum Pro members get an 80% bonus, and Executive Platinum members get a 120% bonus
• In other words, an AAdvantage Gold member earns 7x Loyalty Points per dollar spent, while an Executive Platinum member earns 11x Loyalty Points per dollar spent
• American basic economy tickets are eligible to earn Loyalty Points
• You can earn up to 75,000 Loyalty Points per ticket

How to earn Loyalty Points for flying partner airlines

You can earn Loyalty Points for flying with other airlines as well.

• You can earn Loyalty Points for flights on all oneworld airlines, plus JetBlue and GOL
• You earn redeemable miles at the same rate as before, and those miles also qualify as Loyalty Points
• Elite status bonuses also qualify toward Loyalty Points on partner airlines, and those range from 40-120%
• Cabin bonuses (where you earn miles for flying premium economy, business class, or first class) also qualify toward Loyalty Points

I'm going to give a few examples. AAdvantage Executive Platinum members can book Alaska Airlines first class tickets from Los Angeles to Seattle in the "I" fare class. How many loyalty points do you get for that flight? The mileageearning chart is based on it.

• You earn 100% base miles, so that’s 954 miles
• You then receive a 50% class of service bonus, so that’s 477 miles
• You then earn a 120% elite bonus, so that’s 1,145 miles
• Altogether you earn 2,576 AAdvantage miles, all of which would qualify as Loyalty Points

If you are an AAdvantage Gold member, you can book a British Airways first class ticket from San Francisco to London. How many loyalty points do you get for that flight? The mileageearning chart is based on it.

• You earn 100% base miles, so that’s 5,367 miles
• You then receive a 150% class of service bonus, so that’s 8,051 miles
• You then earn a 40% elite bonus, so that’s 2,147 miles
• Altogether you earn 15,565 AAdvantage miles, all of which would qualify as Loyalty Points

How to earn Loyalty Points for credit card spending

The majority of American AAdvantage credit cards earn loyalty points.

• You earn one Loyalty Point for every base mile earned on the card, which would generally be the rate of one Loyalty Point per dollar spent
• Welcome bonuses don’t count as Loyalty Points
• If you’re spending in a category that’s bonused, you only earn Loyalty Points for the “base” spending, meaning one Loyalty Point for every dollar spent; in other words, if a card offers two AAdvantage miles per dollar spent on American Airlines flight purchases, you still only earn one Loyalty Point
• There are some opportunities to earn bonus Loyalty Points for credit card spending, which you can learn more about here

If you spend $200,000 on a co- branded American Airlines card, it will earn you a $450 annual fee on the Citi / AAdvantage Executive World Elite Mastercard.

You can see the details on how to earn loyalty points with credit cards.

How to earn Loyalty Points for other partner activity

There are other partners that will allow you to earn Loyalty Points if you do not fly. You can earn loyalty points by earning base miles with certain partners.

• Platforms: AAdvantage Dining, AAdvantage eShopping, SimplyMiles
• Hotels: bookaahotels.com, Hyatt, Marriott, IHG, Marriott Vacations, RocketMiles (this includes miles earned with the American & Hyatt partnership)
• Cars: aa.com/car, Avis, Budget, Payless, Hertz, Dollars, Thrifty, Alamo, National, Sixt
• Cruises & vacation packages: bookaacruises.com, aavacations.com
• Retailers: Shell, WeWork, Vinesse, FTD, Vivid Seats, NRG Energy, Reliant Energy, Xoom, Miles for Opinions

You can rack up loyalty points based on your purchases, even if you haven't considered these before.

What activity doesn’t earn Loyalty Points?

There are a number of activities that don't earn loyalty points.

• Buying, gifting, or transferring miles
• Government taxes, fees, and other charges associated with buying airline tickets
• Conversion of another program currency to AAdvantage miles (for example, converting Marriott Bonvoy points, rather than selecting Bonvoy points as your earnings preference for stays)
• For AAdvantage credit cards, welcome bonuses don’t qualify, and neither do “accelerators” or “multipliers” (like extra miles for each dollar spent in certain categories)
• Miles earned with Bask Bank, which offers AAdvantage miles based on how much money you have deposited

These exclusions are intriguing. I don't follow the logic of that, but I'm not surprised that buying miles doesn't count towards loyalty points.

• Presumably American selling AAdvantage miles directly to consumers is higher margin than when American sells miles to partner programs (whether it’s Citi or SimplyMiles)
• I suppose the logic is that American thinks it would be too easy to earn status that way, and doesn’t want to do that; but what does and doesn’t qualify really doesn’t fully make sense

American AAdvantage Loyalty Choice Rewards

Platinum Pro and Executive Platinum members can choose rewards when they earn them. The intent of the program is to give people the flexibility to choose the rewards that are most important to them.

There is a big catch. You need to log 30 segments on American or a partner airline in order to earn Choice Loyalty rewards. Award flights were marketed by American Airlines.

This is a way to not give those perks to people who don't fly a lot. There are perks for loyalty choice rewards.

• Level 1 — 125,000 Loyalty Points
• Level 2 — 200,000 Loyalty Points
• Level 3 — 350,000 Loyalty Points
• Level 4 — 550,000 Loyalty Points
• Level 5 — 750,000 Loyalty Points

The best value is represented by the Loyalty Choice rewards.

Platinum Pro Loyalty Choice Rewards

Platinum Pro members can choose one of the following:

• One systemwide upgrade
• 20,000 AAdvantage bonus miles (25,000 AAdvantage bonus miles if you have an AAdvantage co-brand credit card)
• One-time 15% AAdvantage award savings (applies to a roundtrip award for up to two travelers on any oneworld airline in any cabin, and the rebate will be applied after travel)
• $200 American Airlines travel voucher
• Six Admirals Club one-day passes
• Carbon emissions offset
• $200 donation to one of 10 partner charities

Executive Platinum Loyalty Choice Rewards

Executive Platinum members can choose two of the following when they earn 200,000 Loyalty Points.

• Two systemwide upgrades
• 25,000 AAdvantage bonus miles (30,000 AAdvantage bonus miles if you have an AAdvantage co-brand credit card)
• Gift of AAdvantage Gold status
• Admirals Club membership (this requires two choices)
• Choice of Bang & Olufsen products (this includes headphones, speakers, and earbuds)
• Carbon emissions offset
• $200 donation to one of 10 partner charities
• $200 American Airlines travel voucher

The loyalty perks are similar.

How to see your AAdvantage Loyalty Points total

Log into your AAdvantage account through aa.com or the American Airlines app and you'll be able to see your Loyalty Points total. There is a graphic that shows how far you have to go to qualify for Loyalty Points.

Clicking on the activity tab will show a breakdown of the Loyalty Points you've earned.

Click on thePromotions tab if you would like to figure out your progress towards 30 eligible flights. You can see how many flights you took.

Loyalty Points determine upgrade priority

One of the best perks of elite status is a complimentary upgrade. You can use loyalty points to your advantage. If you have a rolling 12-month total of Loyalty Points, American Airlines will upgrade you first.

The higher your upgrade priority is, the more Loyalty Points you accumulate. All AAdvantage elites are eligible for free upgrade within North America.

There are a lot of people who are eligible for upgrade and limited seats to upgrade to, so higher elite status and a higher Loyalty Points total make a difference in clearing into an available seat.

How to earn American AAdvantage Million Miler lifetime status

You can earn AAdvantage Gold or Platinum status for life if you pass 1 million or 2 million lifetime miles. The requirements to earn are not related to loyalty points.

Base miles earned for travel on eligible partner flights can be used to calculate miles toward million mile. Credit card spending can't be used to earn lifetime status.

American's lifetime elite status program is woefully uncompetitive compared to Delta SkyMiles and United Mileage Plus.

American AAdvantage 2022 status double-dipping

In order to qualify for elite status in the AAdvantage Loyalty Points program, you need to have activity between March 1 of a given year and February 28 of the next year.

American Airlines has made it easier to get status in the future. All activity between January 1, 2022, and February 28, 2023, will be considered for this year. You have 14 months to get status, instead of 12.

Crunching the numbers on AAdvantage Loyalty Points

How difficult is it to get AAdvantage elite status with the Loyalty Points program? In the past, AAdvantage Executive Platinum status required earning 100,000 and 15,000 elite miles in a single year. If you want to earn Loyalty ChoiceRewards, you need 200,000 Loyalty Points.

There's a few thoughts on the math here.

• If you’re earning 11x Loyalty Points per dollar spent on American flights, you’d have to spend ~$18,200 per year on flights to earn Executive Platinum status, which is a significant increase compared to the previous requirement
• Interestingly Executive Platinum status is harder to earn than before if you’re starting from scratch, since you don’t earn the same 120% mileage bonus from the start; you’d have to spend over $27,000 on flights to get to Executive Platinum status from scratch
• On the other end of the spectrum, spending $200,000 per year on a co-branded credit card would also earn you Executive Platinum status, though you’d only receive the Loyalty Choice Benefits if you flew at least 30 segments
• To take a hybrid approach, if you’re an Executive Platinum member you could spend $100,000 per year on a co-branded credit card and spend ~$9,100 per year on flights to maintain Executive Platinum status

Why American shifted to the Loyalty Points system

Road warriors are confused and frustrated about why American has made these changes.

The reality is that this shows how Americans make money. The revenue per seat mile is higher for American Airlines than the cost per seat mile. Most of American's money is made through non-flying means.

American would want to give people an incentive to engage in activities that are profitable.

For more on why this program makes sense, see this post.

Bottom line

The new American AAdvantage elite status is based on how many Loyalty Points you accumulate rather than how much you fly or spend. Through flying, credit card spending, and activity with AAdvantage partners, you can earn loyalty points.

I like the idea of these changes. The Loyalty Points concept simplifies earning elite status and does a better job of considering a member's overall engagement in a loyalty program. That is how loyalty programs make money and engage with their members.

What do you think about the loyalty points program?