Update: For a brief period on the morning of October 1, AAdvantage was selling miles for 1.36 cents each, presumably accidentally. It seemed like the 35% discount was applied twice, rather than once. The offer has now been updated, and isn’t nearly as good. I’ve updated the post to reflect the intended promotion.
American AAdvantage constantly has promotions on purchased miles. With it now being a new month, the program has launched its latest offer.
In this post:
American AAdvantage promo on purchased miles
Through Sunday, October 31, 2021, American AAdvantage is offering up to a 35% discount on purchased miles. The discount is tiered, and you get a bigger percentage discount the more miles you buy, as follows:
- Buy 15,000-49,000 miles, get 15% off
- Buy 50,000-99,000 miles, get 25% off
- Buy 100,000-150,000 miles, get 35% off
Ordinarily American sells AAdvantage miles for around 2.95 cents each (pre-tax) before factoring any discounts or bonuses. At the moment if you buy 150,000 AAdvantage miles you’d pay $3,144.38 which is a cost of 2.1 cents per AAdvantage mile.
As usual, AAdvantage accounts less than 30 days old aren’t eligible to purchase miles. As far as American’s bonuses and discounts on purchased miles go, the program usually charges ~1.7-2.3 cents per mile during a promotion. So this promotion is pretty lousy, and far from the best we’ve seen from the program.
Is buying American AAdvantage miles a good deal?
Personally I value American AAdvantage miles at 1.5 cents each. While American significantly devalued its award chart a few years back, there are still some excellent uses of AAdvantage miles, especially for travel in business class on partner airlines.
As a reminder, here’s the cost of first and business class awards originating in the United States under the current program:
Contiguous 48 U.S. To: | Business Class | First Class |
|---|---|---|
Contiguous 48 U.S. States
| 25,000 | 50,000 |
Canada & Alaska | 30,000 | 55,000 |
Hawaii | 40,000 | 65,000 |
Caribbean | 27,500 | 52,500 |
Mexico | 27,500 | 52,500 |
Central America | 27,500 | 52,500 |
South America Zone 1 | 30,000 | 55,000 |
South America Zone 2 | 57,500 | 85,000 |
Europe | 57,500 | 85,000 |
Middle East / India | 70,000 | 115,000 |
Africa | 75,000 | 120,000 |
Asia Zone 1 | 60,000 | 80,000 |
Asia Zone 2 | 70,000 | 110,000 |
South Pacific | 80,000 | 110,000 |
I find the cost of business class redemptions to still be reasonable in most cases. There are instances where it could make sense to pick up miles during a promotion with a short term use in mind.
For example, I’ve redeemed 75,000 AAdvantage miles for a one-way Qatar Airways business class ticket from Cape Town to the US, which I consider to be a spectacular value.
Which credit card should you buy miles with?
American 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 following cards for your purchase, since you’d earn the following bonuses for airfare:
Card | Points earned on airfare spend |
|---|---|
5x Membership Rewards points per dollar spent on airfare purchased directly from airlines or through Amex Travel, on up to $500,000 on these purchases per calendar year | |
5x ThankYou points per dollar spent | |
3x Membership Rewards points per dollar spent | |
3x Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent | |
3x ThankYou points per dollar spent | |
2x Ultimate Rewards points per dollar spent | |
2 AAdvantage® miles per $1 spent on eligible American Airlines purchases | |
2 AAdvantage® miles per $1 spent on eligible American Airlines purchases | |
2 AAdvantage® miles per $1 spent on eligible American Airlines purchases | |
2 AAdvantage® miles per $1 spent on eligible American Airlines purchases |
For example, I value Membership Rewards points at 1.7 cents each, so I view that as an 8.5% return on this spending if you use The Platinum Card® from American Express (review).
Other great ways to earn American 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 Airlines AAdvantage Cards
- Through November 13, 2021, Citi ThankYou points can be transferred to American AAdvantage, which is a great opportunity
- You can earn AAdvantage miles with a Bask Savings Account
Bottom line
American AAdvantage has just launched its latest promotion on purchased miles. The program is offering up to a 35% discount on purchased miles, which is an opportunity to buy miles for 2.1 cents each. This is one of the worse promotions we’ve seen in quite a while, and I wouldn’t recommend taking advantage of it unless you have an immediate use in mind, and the math checks out.
Do you plan on buying American miles with this promotion?
Lucky, thank you!!! My husband and I were able to both grab 150k miles before they changed it. Fantastic deal!!! Keep up the great work, we appreciate your efforts. :)
This isn't a good deal at all. The discount percentage is low and, more generally speaking, bonuses are better than discounts in that they expand the annual purchase limit. Back in January, a 100% bonus offer enabled me to effectively buy several J class tickets for a fraction of the retail price.
Just spent half a day on the phone because American Airlines' web page cancel-award-flight button says "Your flight is cancelled but we're not returning the miles. If you really insist on getting your miles back, call the call center"
the pricing error is fixed now. Back to 2cpm AFTER 35% discount
Time to remove or update this... it's gone.
Not sure if theres chance they will send cancellation emails for those who were able to get in based on the price mistake.
Seems to be dead now - pricing for me at 3 cpm without any discount at all (not even 35% x 1).
I think they did the 35% discount twice. The ordinary price is $32.25 for 1,000 miles. We have 32.25 * 150 * 0.65 * 0.65 = 2043.84375. That said, I hope the extra discount sticks around!
This is a 57.75% discount since they are probably mistakenly applying 35% off twice! Won't last more than few hours I believe.
Do you still see this pricing? I don't
That's amazing! It's like $1,000 for a one way Qatar Airways Business Class Award ticket from North America to the Middle East, India, or even Africa!
With the 5x miles on purchase from AX Plat or Citi Prestige (which currently has a “temporary?” 1:1 AA transfer promo) cost lowers to 1.275! AA is a difficult transfer from high point yield cards except the current Citi promo. This is worth it to me! Thanks
Looks like the particularly good pricing is only for the 35% discount tier, so 100k+. At least, the regular pricing showed up for me at 50K with the excellent price at 100K. Thanks!
Simply put….Yes….before it goes away! Thanks
it worths about 1.2 cpp for me, and it could go down more, so hard no.