Buy American Airlines Miles: How To Get Up To 40% Off

Buying miles & points strategically can be a good value, especially for first and business class travel.

Going back several years, American AAdvantage used to aggressively sell miles at an attractive cost, and buying them made a lot of sense, assuming you knew what you were doing. However, in 2022, the cost to buy American Airlines miles was increased, as the program stopped offering such lucrative promotions.

Nowadays it seems like American has one 50% off promotion on purchasing miles every year, while otherwise, the program has a 40% off promotion. That 40% off promotion is what is valid right now, so I’d like to go over the details of that, and talk about under what circumstances that could be worth it.

Note that buying AAdvantage miles doesn’t count toward your Loyalty Points total (other than any amount you may spend on an eligible credit card).

Buy American Airlines miles with a promotion

Starting July 23, 2026, and with no published end date, American AAdvantage is offering up to a 40% discount (or 80% bonus, if you prefer) on buying miles. The offer is tiered, and you get a bigger discount the more miles you buy, as follows:

• Buy 3,000-9,000 miles, receive 10% off
• Buy 10,000-29,000 miles, receive 15% off
• Buy 30,000-89,000 miles, receive 20% off
• Buy 90,000-150,000 miles, receive 30% off
• Buy 151,000-300,000 miles, receive 40% off

As you can see, you need to buy a lot of miles to get the best price!

How much does it cost to buy American Airlines miles?

Ordinarily American sells AAdvantage miles for 3.5 cents each pre-tax, or 3.76 cents after factoring in the 7.5% federal excise tax. That’s before any discounts or bonuses. In this case if you max out the promotion and buy 300,000 AAdvantage miles, you’d pay a total of $6,772.50, which comes out to 2.26 cents per mile (that factors in the 7.5% tax). Keep in mind that American Airlines mileage purchases are non-refundable.

The best promotion we’ve seen from American in the past couple of years is for a 50% discount, which would get you a price of 1.88 cents per mile, after taxes. However, that promotion only seems to come around once per year.

How many American Airlines miles can you buy?

The American AAdvantage program ordinarily allows members to buy at most 300,000 miles per account per calendar year, before factoring in any bonuses. Note that AAdvantage accounts less than 30 days old aren’t eligible to buy American Airlines miles.

How do you buy American Airlines miles?

The process of buying American Airlines miles is easy — the easiest way is to simply follow this link. Alternatively, you can go to aa.com, click on “AAdvantage” at the top of the page, and then click on “Buy, gift or transfer miles.”

From there, you’ll be prompted to log into your AAdvantage account, and then that’s where you can select how many miles you’d like to buy. When you buy American Airlines miles, they’ll typically post to your account instantly.

Can you buy American Airlines miles?

Yes, you absolutely can buy American Airlines miles, you just have to be aware of a few restrictions. For one, your account needs to be at least 30 days old. On top of that, you have to stay within the annual cap.

It’s possible to buy miles for yourself or others, but of you’ll need to be sure you use the right account to make the purchase.

Which credit card should you buy American Airlines miles with?

American AAdvantage processes mileage purchases directly, which means the purchase of miles does qualify as airfare spending. Therefore you’ll want to consider using one of the below cards for your purchase, since you’d earn bonus points for airfare purchases.

5x Membership Rewards points per dollar spent directly with airlines or through Amex Travel, on up to $500,000 on these purchases per calendar year and then 1x

American Express Platinum Card®

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3x Membership Rewards points per dollar spent directly with airlines

American Express® Gold Card

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4x Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent directly with airlines

Chase Sapphire Reserve®

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2x Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent on airfare

Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card

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For example, I value Membership Rewards points at 1.7 cents each, so by my math American Express Platinum Card® (review) offers an 8.5% return on this spending, given the 5x points category.

Is buying American AAdvantage miles worth it?

Unlike Delta SkyMiles and United MileagePlus, American AAdvantage continues to publish award charts for travel on partner airlines, and redemption rates are largely quite good, especially for travel in premium cabins on partner airlines. Among the “big three” carriers in the US, I tend to think AAdvantage has the best redemption opportunities.

I find the cost of business class redemptions to be excellent in many cases. There are instances where it could make sense to pick up miles during a promotion with a short term use in mind. Just to give a few examples of some of my favorite uses of AAdvantage miles (all redemption rates are one-way):

• For 57,500 miles you can fly from the United States to Morocco in Royal Air Maroc business class
• For 60,000 miles you could fly from the United States to Japan in Japan Airlines business class
• For 70,000 miles you could fly from the United States to most of Asia in Cathay Pacific business class
• For 70,000 miles you can fly from the United States to India in Etihad business class
• For 75,000 miles you can fly from the United States to South Africa in Qatar Airways business class

Now, unfortunately the catch is that partner award availability is in many instances quite limited. For airlines like Cathay Pacific, Etihad, and Qatar Airways, the airlines now largely restrict premium awards to members of their own frequent flyer programs. So definitely do your research before buying any miles.

Another thing worth mentioning is that if you redeem for travel on British Airways, get ready to pay huge carrier imposed surcharges, which could be hundreds of dollars on a long haul premium cabin trip. So that wouldn’t be my preferred use of American Airlines miles.

On what airlines can you redeem American Airlines miles?

American Airlines belongs to the oneworld alliance, so you can redeem AAdvantage miles on all oneworld airlines.

On top of that, you can redeem miles on some of American’s other partner airlines, including Air Tahiti Nui, China Southern, Etihad Airways, and GOL Airlines, among others.

How much are American Airlines miles worth?

Everyone will value mileage currencies differently, but personally I value American AAdvantage miles at ~1.5 cents each. However, I tend to value points pretty conservatively, and there are many ways to get way more value from AAdvantage miles than that.

Do American Airlines miles expire?

American AAdvantage miles don’t expire as long as you have at least some account activity once every 24 months. Eligible activity includes earning or redeeming AAdvantage miles in any quantity.

What other ways can you earn American Airlines miles?

There are lots of great ways to earn American miles aside from outright buying them:

• There are excellent welcome bonuses on co-branded American AAdvantage credit cards
• You can convert Citi ThankYou points into American AAdvantage miles at a 1:1 ratio, and can also transfer Marriott Bonvoy points into American AAdvantage miles at a 3:1 ratio, with 5,000 bonus airline miles for every 60,000 Bonvoy points transferred
• You can earn AAdvantage miles with a Bask Savings Account
• You can earn AAdvantage miles for everyday purchases with programs like AAdvantage Dining and SimplyMiles

Bottom line

American AAdvantage is offering a discount on buying miles on an ongoing basis. The program is offering up to a 40% discount when you buy American Airlines miles, which is an opportunity to buy them for 2.26 cents each. While I wouldn’t speculatively buy miles at this cost, with a specific use in mind, there could be value with this offer.

Do you plan on buying American miles with this promotion?