It’s normal for airlines to make minor tweaks to their loyalty programs every year. American Airlines has just announced some updates to the AAdvantage program for 2025. I’d say the changes are minor but positive. This is a case where a lack of news is good news.
Continue reading: American AAdvantage Unveils Positive Changes For 2025
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Sad to see that 1mm is lifetime gold vs the tiers you get with Delta and United. It's a huge disincentive to me from a long term perspective.
Other than changes to LT miles these are minimal changes. I agree AA needs to step up it's BOB but I wouldn't hold my breath.
The fact is that there's an opportunity cost to using AA credit cards, the AA shopping portal, and the AA hotel portal relative to competitors. AA only crediting in-the-air miles towards lifetime tier status pushes my spending away from AA revenue channels. AA has made a choice and I have made a choice. It's that simple.
Did AA restart the BoB food? Only item they have now is the cheese and grapes on flights greater than 1400 miles. No food like they had before. Maybe they will restart salads and sandwiches.
I bet we see another "devaluation" in LPs/miles earned for partners like AAdvantage Hotels, the shopping portal, SimplyMiles, etc. These were insanely lucrative the first year, less so this year, and I bet the trend continues downwards. No point to award so many miles/LPs when you already have people "hooked" on the gamified way of it all.
A related observation: AA Shopping had MUCH weaker offers than Rakuten around Black Friday/Cyber Monday. In the past, they used to be much more comparable
Indeed. Simply Miles has not had anything worth pursuing in quite some time. I still defer to the AA portal when all else is equal (or close), but the rates are not as good as in 2023. Honestly, Capital One Offers and Capital One Shopping have gotten more of my tracking clicks because the rates and targeted offers are so good. And AA hotels has a hard time competing with the AS rates on Rocketmiles, which are quite good right now. In 2025, the ability to earn AS status in a similar way through spending might cause AA to up their game. Competition helps us all.
I'm in a similar boat - given the choice between chasing LT status with AA or BA, the latter makes far more sense than the former since I tend to pay up front for premium cabin space.
Thank you AA for allowing me to shop my travel now with the LT EXP. What BS that that requires 5M, but thankfully I am closer to 6M so it doesn't matter. Too Bad they don't offer a LT CK option like United does with GS (at 4M).
AA is going to start bringing in actual food for the flight? My dog wouldn't eat the box "food" in first class.
To be fair, neither DL nor UA currently gives lifetime credit for anything but in-the-air miles (though DL at least has a fairly lossy channel for turning credit card spend into in-the-air miles, as they give MM credit for award flights).
AA EP has become virtually worthless to us. We are 48hrs out from our next flight with F6 and no sign of clearing the upg but they still are selling it for $73 in the app. Those days are gone. We burned 2 EVIPs (we have no other use for them) on $149 tickets ORD CLT MIA (nonstop not available but at least CLT MIA is a 777]. No meal on either flight which is fine as dinner in CLT CL will be much better. Flying BA F MIA LHR DUS and then will be GGL on BA. For our travel patterns, this will be a much more beneficial status. Looking forward to exploring all the “new” perks of a different loyalty program, especially the Concorde Room! Bring on the haters but it’s still WAY nicer than Galleries First. Cheers!
WOW...JUST WOW...Fly 5-Million Miles and we'll "give you EP..." WTH?!?! Sure I want to compete for upgrades with a bunch of credit card spenders who fly fly less than half of what an ACTUAL EP flies clogging up the upgrade list or when they have enough miles to travel to Hawaii or Europe.
That is why I said "Buh-Bye" after receiving AA's CK. I'll work on my 4 Million miles to attain GS with UA. Way to go AA in pi$$ing off actual fliers.
Time to move on, Oct 2024 rt ticket from Philly to Naples It was 150k mile for Business. Now it’s 690k. DL is still 93.5k rt Dulles to London. As I said, time to return to Delta!