Citi American Airlines Business Credit Card: 8 Reasons To Apply

Citi American Airlines Business Credit Card: 8 Reasons To Apply

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Link: Apply now for the CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® Mastercard®

The CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® Mastercard® offers an excellent welcome bonus, can help you earn elite status, is anecdotally easy to be approved for, and is a card that many people haven’t applied for in the past, and are therefore eligible for.

In this post I wanted to share eight reasons you should consider applying for this card, assuming you don’t have it already. For a more detailed look at the card, check out my review of the Citi AAdvantage Business Card. Let’s get right into it, in no particular order…

Earn 65,000 AAdvantage bonus miles

The Citi AAdvantage Business Card offers an excellent welcome bonus of 65,000 AAdvantage bonus miles after spending $4,000 within the first four months. I value AAdvantage miles at 1.5 cents each, so to me that bonus is worth nearly $1,000.

That’s a lot of miles — you’d be just shy of 70,000 AAdvantage miles, which is enough for a one-way business class ticket on a partner airline from the United States to Europe, Asia, the Middle East, India, South America, and more. 75,000 AAdvantage miles is enough for a one-way business class ticket between the United States and South Africa.

Personally, my favorite use of AAdvantage miles is for travel on Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways, given their excellent business class products. For example, I’ve redeemed 75,000 AAdvantage miles to fly Qatar Airways business class from Cape Town to Doha to Dallas to Miami, which was one of my favorite uses of AAdvantage miles ever.

See this post for more great ways to redeem AAdvantage miles.

Redeem AAdvantage miles for travel in Qatar Airways Qsuites

Earn AAdvantage elite status with spending

Nowadays American AAdvantage elite status is earned using Loyalty Points, meaning that credit card spending can help you earn status, and also counts toward Loyalty Point Rewards. Every eligible dollar spent on this card will earn you one Loyalty Point.

As a reminder, here are the current requirements to earn AAdvantage elite status:

While this isn’t how I’d recommend going about it, spending $200,000 on the Citi AAdvantage Business Card would earn you top-tier Executive Platinum status. You can also take a hybrid approach, and earn status partly through credit card spending, and partly through travel and other activity, which is what I’d recommend.

Earn AAdvantage elite status with credit card spending

$99 annual fee waived the first year

While the Citi AAdvantage Business Card has a reasonable $99 annual fee, it’s waived for the first 12 months, so this is a card you can “try before you buy.” It’s hard to beat the combination of a waived annual fee for the first year and a great welcome bonus.

The card doesn’t count toward 5/24

If you want to apply for Chase credit cards, it’s important to be aware of the 5/24 rule. With this, you typically won’t be approved for a Chase card if you’ve opened five or more new card accounts in the past 24 months.

However, only certain cards count toward that limit. Most business credit card applications, including Citi business card applications, don’t count toward it. This is because these cards don’t show on your personal credit report in the same way personal cards do. If you want a great credit card but don’t want to increase your count toward 5/24, this is a reason to pick up this card.

Non-restrictive eligibility requirements

Card issuers have a variety of eligibility restrictions when it comes to getting approved for cards. This card has among the less restrictive rules. Specifically, here are the terms for the Citi AAdvantage Business Card:

You’re not eligible for this card if you’ve received a new cardmember bonus on this exact card in the past 48 months. However, having any of the Citi AAdvantage personal cards doesn’t prevent you from getting the bonus on this card. That’s great, since it means lots of people should be eligible for the bonus.

This card has fairly lax requirements in terms of eligibility

Anecdotally easy card approval

Of course we never actually know the underwriting standards of card issuers, though anecdotally many OMAAT readers have reported that the Citi AAdvantage Business Card is one of the easier business credit cards to be approved for. This of course assumes that you have good or excellent credit.

So if you’re someone who has struggled to get approved for Chase cards (for example) in the past, maybe it could be worth giving a Citi business credit card like this a try.

Redeem AAdvantage miles for travel in Finnair business class

First checked bag fee on American

Just for having the Citi AAdvantage Business Card you receive a first checked bag free on domestic American Airlines flights. You don’t actually have to pay with the card to use this perk, but rather the AAdvantage number of the primary cardmember just has to be on the reservation. This benefit also applies for up to four additional passengers traveling on the same itinerary.

American usually charges $30 one-way per checked bag, for a total of $60 roundtrip. So if you had four companions, you’re looking at savings of up to $300 on a roundtrip ticket.

Get a first checked bag free with the card

Preferred boarding on American

Just for having the Citi AAdvantage Business Card you receive preferred boarding on American Airlines flights. This allows you to board with Group 5 — while that’s not priority boarding, it should put you in an early enough boarding group that you don’t have issues with finding overhead bin space, which is something that many value.

You don’t actually have to pay with the card to use this perk, but rather the AAdvantage number of the primary cardmember just has to be on the reservation.

Preferred boarding helps with finding overhead bin space

Looking for a personal credit card?

If this card sounds interesting to you, but you’re looking for a personal card instead, consider the Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard®. The card has largely overlapping perks, and has a welcome bonus of 50,000 AAdvantage miles after spending $2,500 within the first three months. You could even pick up both the personal and business card, if you wanted to.

Check out my review of the Citi AAdvantage Personal Card.

Bottom line

The Citi AAdvantage Business Card is offering a great welcome bonus with the annual fee waived the first year. On top of that, this is a card that many people don’t have and are eligible for, which will make it all the more interesting. 65,000 AAdvantage miles can get you some awesome premium travel experiences.

With American AAdvantage’s Loyalty Points system, spending on this card also counts toward elite status, which is a big incentive to spend money on AAdvantage cards.

If you want to learn more about the CitiBusiness AAdvantage Platinum Card or apply, follow this link.

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  1. Ronin308 Guest

    As someone looking to get an AA card, is the 65k bonus the historic high or should I wait?

    You also might want to point out that Saver awards for business can be even lower. For example I was able to do one-way Athens to my hometown via LHR and DFW in BA business for around 47k miles. Having your first A380 flight on the upper deck in business was definitely cool.

    1. Dave Guest

      American eliminated the Saver awards.

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Dave Guest

American eliminated the Saver awards.

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Ronin308 Guest

As someone looking to get an AA card, is the 65k bonus the historic high or should I wait? You also might want to point out that Saver awards for business can be even lower. For example I was able to do one-way Athens to my hometown via LHR and DFW in BA business for around 47k miles. Having your first A380 flight on the upper deck in business was definitely cool.

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