Live: American AAdvantage Loyalty Points Program

The carrier's new loyalty program will launch on March 1, 2022. The program is live now, and I wanted to recap the changes we learned about back in October.

The concept of elite qualified miles and elite qualified dollars was eliminated by the Fort Worth-based airline. AAdvantage elite status doesn't just account for how much you fly with American, but also how much you engage with American partners.

If you wanted to, 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 old system.

Earn American AAdvantage elite status with Loyalty Points

How many points you accumulate is what determines American AAdvantage elite status. One Loyalty Point is earned for every A mile earned. The requirements for AAdvantage elite status are as follows.

• 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

Status is earned between the beginning of March of a particular year and the end of February of the following year, and is valid through March 31 of the year after that. Status is no longer based on the traditional calendar year.

You are probably wondering what is considered a "qualifying" for Loyalty Points. Spending $200,000 on a credit card would earn you Executive Platinum status, but buying 200,000 AAdvantage miles wouldn't. Let's go over those details.

How to earn Loyalty Points for flying American Airlines

Flying with American Airlines is the most popular way to earn Loyalty Points. When flying American Airlines.

• 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

How to earn Loyalty Points for flying partner airlines

You can also earn Loyalty Points for flying with partner airlines if you fly with American Airlines.

• 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, except 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

Let me show you a few examples. AAdvantage Executive Platinum members can book an Alaska Airlines first class ticket from Los Angeles to Seattle in the fare class of their choice. How many Loyalty Points do you get for that flight? The mileage earning chart is based on this.

• 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 in the fare class. How many Loyalty Points do you get for that flight? The mileage earning chart is based on this.

• 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 have 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

You can see the details on earning Loyalty Points with credit cards.

How to earn Loyalty Points for other partner activity

You can earn Loyalty Points with other partners beyond credit cards. Loyalty Points can be earned with base miles earned 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 hadn't considered these programs in the past.

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 interesting to me. I don't follow the logic of that, but I am 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

The concept of Elite Choice rewards was revealed by American Airlines in 2020. The idea is that both Platinum Pro and Executive Platinum members can choose the rewards they value the most. The new program has a slight change.

Platinum Pro and Executive Platinum members can continue to choose rewards when they earn Platinum Pro and Executive Platinum status. There is one major catch. You need to log 30 segments on American or a partner airline in order to earn Choice Loyalty. American Airlines marketed award flights.

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

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 earning 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

You can read more about the higher thresholds here.

AAdvantage accounts should be updated to reflect Loyalty Points

If you log into your AAdvantage account today, you will see a completely different interface than the one you had previously. My account still shows zero, and it looks like the points balances haven't been updated for all members. I think this will change soon.

Loyalty Points now determine upgrade priority

When the old American AAdvantage program was in existence, the first thing to do was to upgrade to elite status. The concept of EQDs has been eliminated, so now upgrades are prioritized by your Loyalty Points total.

Changes to American's upgrade program are imminent. All elite members will soon be eligible for complimentary upgrades, and they will be cleared earlier at the airport.

American AAdvantage Million Miler lifetime status remains unchanged

You can earn AAdvantage Gold or Platinum status for life if you pass one million or two million lifetime miles. The requirements to earn are not related to Loyalty Points.

Base miles earned for travel on eligible partner marketed flights are used to calculate miles toward million mile. You can't earn lifetime status through credit card spending.

American AAdvantage status double-dipping

In order to be eligible for elite status in the new AAdvantage Loyalty Points program, you have to be active between March 1 of a given year and February 28 of the following year. It is a reminder that American has made it easier to get status.

All mileage activity in January and February of 2022, is considered to be status qualification. The members have 14 months to earn elite status. Even though the qualification year has just started, your AAdvantage account already shows some Loyalty Points.

In theory I love these AAdvantage changes

I think the program changes are great. In recent years airline loyalty programs have become too transactional and complicated, and have missed out on the big picture. The concept behind these program changes is brilliant, as members can be rewarded for their overall loyalty to AAdvantage, rather than just how much they fly.

It makes sense to reward people who earn airline miles through non-flying means. It is logical to reward someone for how much they fly with American, but also for how much they use an American Airlines credit card, dine through the AAdvantage Dining program, etc.

The concept is one thing, but how is it in reality?

Crunching the numbers on AAdvantage Loyalty Points

I'm not sure whether to think that this is reasonable or not, and I'm still trying to do the math on Loyalty Points. For context.

• Executive Platinum status used to require 100,000 elite qualifying miles and 15,000 elite qualifying dollars
• In 2021, Executive Platinum status required 80,000 elite qualifying miles and 12,000 elite qualifying dollars
• In 2022, Executive Platinum status requires 200,000 Loyalty Points

There are 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, which is a significant increase
• Interestingly Executive Platinum status is even harder to earn 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

I'm curious to hear what readers think of the new requirements. I think that it might be easier to qualify if we put our heads together and figure out some of the more lucrative opportunities out there.

Bottom line

The new loyalty program takes a completely different approach to awarding status. You now earn elite status based on how many Loyalty Points you earn, rather than other metrics. Through flying, credit card spending, and activity with AAdvantage partners, Loyalty Points can be earned.

I like the concept behind these changes. The new Loyalty Points concept simplifies earning elite status and does a better job of considering a member's overall engagement in a loyalty program, beyond flying. That is how a loyalty program makes money and engages with members.

The Loyalty Points thresholds seem high at first glance. If you can earn status based on a combination of credit card spending, online shopping, dining, and flying, it might not be as difficult as it seems.

What do you think about the new program?