Citi AAdvantage Platinum Card Review: Nice Bonus & Waived Annual Fee

If i only travel lets say 2-3 times per year on American, does it make sense to apply for the card? Are the 75,000 miles even worth it anymore? I see main cabin to Miami around 30k roundtrip per person.

@ Mike -- I think the perks of the card (preferred boarding and a free checked bag) are most valuable for those who don't fly enough to earn status.

If you put some effort into redeeming them, there's huge value to be had with the 75K bonus miles. That's enough miles for a one-way business class ticket on airlines like Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways. You can see more uses of American miles here:
https://onemileatatime.com/guides/best-american-aadvantage-awards/

HI Ben
Agree-this is one of the best cards if you want long-haul travel on Qatar airways.

However, I have not found any Etihad redemption possibilities in a very long time- for which routes do you see them?

Separately, I don't know if others have noticed but with American now flying its own metal from JFK to DOH finding J seats on the Qatar-operated flights is close to impossible-

any thoughts?

@ AT -- As far as Etihad space goes, it often doesn't show through American's website. However, if Etihad has saver space (known as "Guest" availability) then it'll generally be bookable through American's call center, especially the one in Australia. So there are potentially some hoops to jump through, but it's not impossible to book.

As far as Qatar Airways goes, the airline tends to release award availability in spurts. Sometimes availability is great, while other times it isn't. It all depends when you're traveling, but right now I see plenty of availability for Qatar business class in early 2024, from a variety of US gateways. Sometimes availability is even much better than that.

The restriction to only provide a checked bag on "domestic" itineraries is a big limitation. I had this card in the past when this limitation was even hidden further in the fine print and ended up with an unexpected bag charge on a flight to the Caribbean.

United and other airline credit cards provide a system-wide free bag benefit. Unless you fly American Airlines domestically, this card benefit has little value.

Citi is so weird, just like Capital One. I already have this card, I had my wife apply. Perfect credit, all scores well over 800, have multiple credit cards with other companies that are 35k+ limits. Have a few other cards with Citi with 20k limites. denied instantly.

Does having an American airlines credit card give you access to more flights using miles similar to having an United airlines card?

Had the Gold version of this card until a few months ago, when Citi swapped me to Platinum Select. Am I still eligible for the mileage bonus or is that for new account holders only?

Don’t feel bad, the same thing happened to me. 800 plus credit score, no debt and six figure income and turned down instantly.

This is actually a huge problem.

Also applied for this card. Also denied. Also credit score of 800+ and, like others who read this blog or those who follow advice from places like CreditKarma, pay off my credit cards before the end of the billing cycle.

What Citi essentially does here is misinterpret the data given to them by the credit bureau (Equifax). They see month-over-month low credit utilization and defer from that the customer must not use the cards.

As in other people's cases, this is completely wrong in my case. The reason for the denial is based on this false assumption of "low utilization = unused credit" and the further assumption of " unused credit = this customer only applies for the bonus of the card."

The issue at stake here is Citi using its own algorithm to calculate eligibility for the card, and the current calculation generates false assumptions and produces denials based on these false assumptions and misinterpretation of the credit bureau data.

To everyone impacted by this who thinks was wrongfully denied based on this misinterpretation of their credit history: I would urge you to call Citi's Credit Card Application reconsideration line and explain the situation to a Supervisor (anyone you first speak to when you call is not authorized to do anything other than read out the denial reasons to you.)

Make the supervisors aware of the issue and explain to them that this is a false assumption made by Citi and resulting in a wrongful denial of your application.
This is clearly a Citi issue, but they will want to point to the credit bureaus for this, don't let them fool you. They are using "snapshot" data from the end of the billing cycles reported to the credit bureaus, but more importantly, they wrongly interpret that data for many of us including Lucky.

I believe the more noise we can create the higher the chances are someone at Citi will hear and fix the broken system they attempted to implement.

@Ben can you update this offer .... It's noe expired! The new offer is $200 statement credit + 40K bonus miles, $0 Ann fee first year. Is this new offer with the $200 statement credit worth it more than the 50K or 75K bonus miles record highest was?

I have trouble using it internationally, since I travel globally for business I went ahead and cancelled it not worth the aggravation.

can you update credit card link please?