Earn 30 American Miles Per Dollar Spent On Flowers (Qualifies As Loyalty Points)

With American Airlines’ new AAdvantage program, status qualification is based on how many Loyalty Points you earn. You can earn Loyalty Points through all kinds of non-flying means, from credit card spending to making purchases with AAdvantage partners.

At the moment American Airlines partner FTD has a lucrative promotion on buying flowers for Valentine’s Day, which could boost your mileage account and your progress toward elite status.

Earn 30x AAdvantage miles with FTD

At the moment American AAdvantage is offering 30 miles per dollar spent on FTD Valentine’s Day flowers.

Not only would you earn AAdvantage redeemable miles, but they would also qualify as Loyalty Points. As a reminder, here’s how many Loyalty Points you need in order to earn status with American:

• 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

With each purchase you’ll see the exact number of AAdvantage miles earned listed.

The most expensive option seems to be an arrangement of three dozen red roses for $275, which earns 8,250 AAdvantage miles.

The catch is that taxes and the delivery charge don’t earn AAdvantage miles, so you won’t quite earn 30 AAdvantage miles per dollar “out of pocket.”

If you do make a purchase, make sure you check that the correct number of AAdvantage miles shows before you confirm your purchase. Presumably this offer can change, and there are also some exclusions.

Crunching the numbers on this offer

A $275 bouquet would end up costing you $315.64, and you’d earn 8,250 AAdvantage miles. So while you earn 30 miles per dollar spent on the actual flowers, in the end you’re earning closer to 26 AAdvantage miles per dollar spent.

You can add up to 20 products to your cart per purchase, and unfortunately the delivery fee is the same per item, no matter how many you order. So if you spent $6,312 you’d earn a total of 165,000 AAdvantage miles.

Do I recommend buying a bunch of flowers in order to earn AAdvantage elite status? No, probably not. But if you have a loved one you want to buy flowers for, I’d definitely recommend considering this offer. And maybe buy something that’s a bit more extravagant than what you’d otherwise buy.

Like I said, in the end you can earn up to 26 AAdvantage miles per dollar spent, after factoring in the taxes and delivery fees. To do the math a bit differently, if you earn 26 AAdvantage miles per dollar spent, you’re spending 3.8 cents per AAdvantage mile:

• I value the redeemable miles at 1.5 cents each
• That means you’re really paying 2.3 cents per Loyalty Point (3.8 cents minus 1.5 cents), after deducting the value of the redeemable miles
• This doesn’t factor in the value of the actual flowers or the credit card rewards; you can either earn more Loyalty Points with your credit card spending, or you could use the best cards for everyday spending, which earn a 3.4% return by my valuation

Bottom line

At the moment you can earn 30 AAdvantage miles per dollar spent on select FTD floral arrangements for Valentine’s Day. Unfortunately you don’t earn miles on taxes or delivery fees, so in the end you’ll earn at most 26 AAdvantage miles per dollar spent on the total amount, give or take.

This is the best deal we’ve seen from FTD since the Loyalty Points program was introduced, so this is a great way to make someone feel special while also making yourself feel more special (by earning elite status).

Do you plan on taking advantage of this AAdvantage FTD promotion? If so, to what extent?