FINALLY: American Makes It Easier To Track Your Mileage Balance Online

FINALLY: American Makes It Easier To Track Your Mileage Balance Online

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American’s IT has always been lacking a bit, in my opinion, especially in comparison to Delta and United. For one, it has long been tough to track mileage activity on American’s website. While they’ve shown the total number of redeemable miles earned, they’ve never shown a breakdown of the number of elite qualifying miles earned by flight. This is rather annoying, as it makes it very tough to track if miles posted correctly or not, especially for travel on partner airlines.

American-First-Class - 1

With American introducing revenue based mileage earning starting next month, they recently added a functionality to the website where they’ll show you how many miles you’ll earn under the new program. It’s great to be able to see that upfront, especially given that the mileage earning isn’t otherwise especially transparent. Revenue based mileage earning is based on the “base” fare, before taxes and fees, and that sometimes isn’t clearly broken down on the website.

AAdvantage-3

So while American adding that functionality was a must, they’ve just added something else that’s awesome and long overdue. When you look at your mileage summary on aa.com, you’ll now see a breakdown by flight of the number of elite qualifying miles, elite qualifying segments, bonus miles, and base miles, along with the corresponding ticket numbers and dates.

For example, here’s part of my summary:

American-Website

I’m thrilled to see them add this functionality, as it makes it so much easier to track miles. Ultimately this had to come sooner or later, given that elite qualifying and redeemable miles will soon be two totally different totals, so allowing members to track just one won’t do the trick.

Bottom line

I’m happy to see American finally add this functionality, though it’s unfortunate that what forced this to happen is American introducing revenue based mileage earning, which made a summary like this a necessity.

Regardless, it’s great that it’s now easier to track mileage accrual online.

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  1. Merrill Rufus Guest

    As trade legislation finally proceeds to a vote, a top Democrat announced he cannot support fast-track authority. As legislation to fast-track congressional approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership gets ready to finally make its debut in Congress this week, a top Democratic member of the House announced he would oppose the bill.

  2. Evan Guest

    Hi Lucky, i agree with you about AA's IT being slower than UA. Compared to UA, it took them 1-2 more days to verify and credit me with miles from an AA flight that I forgot to enter my AAdvantage number and 1-2 more days to do the same for credit from partner airlines. And they only allow me to request for credit 2 weeks after the flight. In this day and age, all it...

    Hi Lucky, i agree with you about AA's IT being slower than UA. Compared to UA, it took them 1-2 more days to verify and credit me with miles from an AA flight that I forgot to enter my AAdvantage number and 1-2 more days to do the same for credit from partner airlines. And they only allow me to request for credit 2 weeks after the flight. In this day and age, all it takes is for an employee to log into their system to verify this information almost instantaenously, so it's something that they can fix quickly if they want to. I switched from flying more UA to flying more AA, now I'm thinking of switching back as UA flight seating and lounges are catching up with AA.

  3. ffi Guest

    Still bad
    The old US airways site had 3 YEARS of info online
    Now if you do not save it in 6 months, it is hidden forever

    DL and UA both allow years of activity

  4. daru1 Guest

    @Donna
    I meant specifically, Lucky's first graphic above "AA earnings for this trip." I'm EXP and don't have that anywhere. Yes, the basic EQM/EQS tracker is there.

  5. Donna Diamond

    Great that it eliminates the need for personal mileage bookkeeping and also it makes it easier to track omissions and errors quickly and get the account corrected.

    @daru1 - You can find it under activity and upgrades section on your AA account under "Activity by Month"

  6. Benjamin J Travel Guest

    Saw this pop up yesterday. Welcomed site improvement....tiny consolation for the downgrade in going revenue-earning I guess.

  7. Michael Guest

    The mileage earning feature may not be available to everyone yet - at least not for me in the UK.
    I've checked three future reservations, and the mileage earnings do not appear.
    Two of them are using SWU's, and there isn't even a ticket cost breakdown on these reservations although I paid a retail fare through aa.com.
    The other is a single US domestic flight that was priced in British Sterling, has...

    The mileage earning feature may not be available to everyone yet - at least not for me in the UK.
    I've checked three future reservations, and the mileage earnings do not appear.
    Two of them are using SWU's, and there isn't even a ticket cost breakdown on these reservations although I paid a retail fare through aa.com.
    The other is a single US domestic flight that was priced in British Sterling, has a cost breakdown but no detail on what miles can be earned.

    It will be interesting to see how the revenue calculation is done given the devaluation of the pound in the past couple of weeks. I'm unsure if I would earn at the equivalent dollar value at the time of the reservation, or if they use an exchange rate at the time of travel. Under normal circumstances this wouldn't vary by much, but now because of Brexit, and subsequent devaluation of sterling, these things matter.

    The enhanced AAdvantage statement features however are available which are a great improvement, and they have updated all past monthly statements.

  8. daru1 Guest

    How'd you get that 'earnings' screen?

  9. Matt Guest

    Would be nice if AS would do this too :-(

  10. Mark O Guest

    Any idea when AA will add the bonus to SPG (if they do it this year)?

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The comments on this page have not been provided, reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any advertiser, and it is not an advertiser's responsibility to ensure posts and/or questions are answered.

Merrill Rufus Guest

As trade legislation finally proceeds to a vote, a top Democrat announced he cannot support fast-track authority. As legislation to fast-track congressional approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership gets ready to finally make its debut in Congress this week, a top Democratic member of the House announced he would oppose the bill.

0
Evan Guest

Hi Lucky, i agree with you about AA's IT being slower than UA. Compared to UA, it took them 1-2 more days to verify and credit me with miles from an AA flight that I forgot to enter my AAdvantage number and 1-2 more days to do the same for credit from partner airlines. And they only allow me to request for credit 2 weeks after the flight. In this day and age, all it takes is for an employee to log into their system to verify this information almost instantaenously, so it's something that they can fix quickly if they want to. I switched from flying more UA to flying more AA, now I'm thinking of switching back as UA flight seating and lounges are catching up with AA.

0
ffi Guest

Still bad The old US airways site had 3 YEARS of info online Now if you do not save it in 6 months, it is hidden forever DL and UA both allow years of activity

0
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