American AAdvantage has launched a noteworthy targeted promotion that incentivizes award flights. I can’t help but wonder about the long term implications of this…
In this post:
American AAdvantage incentivizing award flights
Some American AAdvantage members are finding themselves targeted for a promotion that provides rewards for taking award flights. You can see if you’re eligible by logging into your AAdvantage account and checking the “promotions” tab, whether on aa.com or the American mobile app.
There seem to be two versions of the offer:
- One version offers 50 Loyalty Points per 1,000 AAdvantage miles redeemed
- One version offers 100 Loyalty Points per 1,000 AAdvantage miles redeemed
The basic terms seem to be as follows:
- You must register and book travel by October 7, 2024
- Travel has to be completed by December 31, 2024
- You can earn up to 20,000 Loyalty Points with this offer
- Only award travel on American and American Eagle qualifies, and not award travel on partner airlines
- Bonus Loyalty Points will post within six to eight weeks of completing eligible activity
- Only those who are targeted and are able to register are eligible for this; for example, I don’t see it on my account, but others report seeing this
As a reminder, Loyalty Points is American’s system for elite status qualification. You don’t earn any AAdvantage redeemable miles with this offer, so this is purely valuable for status.
Could this become a permanent program feature?
I can’t help but think that this promotion is intended to see how rewarding award flights impacts consumer behavior. Keep in mind that both Delta SkyMiles and United MileagePlus count award flights toward status:
- With Delta SkyMiles, Medallion Qualifying Dollars (MQDs) are earned at the rate of one cent per redeemed mile; in other words, redeeming 10,000 miles earns you 100 MQDs
- With United MileagePlus, Premier Qualifying Points (PQPs) are earned at the rate of one cent per redeemed mile; in other words, redeeming 10,000 miles earns you 100 PQPs
As you can see, Delta and United are essentially valuing each mile redeemed at a penny, and are rewarding it as such.
With American AAdvantage, the program ordinarily awards 5x Loyalty Points per dollar spent, before any elite bonuses (Executive Platinum members receive a 120% bonus, so earn 11x Loyalty Points per dollar spent). So the offer of 50 Loyalty Points per 1,000 miles redeemed would be comparable to what you see at Delta and United, at least for non-elite members. I imagine the offer of 100 Loyalty Points per 1,000 miles redeemed was thrown in there to do some testing, and see how it impacts behavior.
I wouldn’t be surprised if American plans to eventually roll this out on a widespread basis. On the surface, that would be awesome news, especially as someone who constantly redeems miles for travel on American. However, it’s a double-edged sword.
I’m not a fan of American following Delta and United when it comes to the loyalty program, since American miles remain more valuable than Delta and United miles. If miles are increasingly treated as a currency worth a cent toward the cost of a ticket on American, I think it could eliminate some of the outsized redemption opportunities.
So for now we’ll mark this as “developing.” I’m excited about the prospect of this maybe becoming a permanent program feature, but also worry about the implications.
Bottom line
American AAdvantage has just launched a targeted promotion, which offers rewards for redeeming miles. Eligible members can earn 50-100 Loyalty Points per 1,000 miles redeemed. With Delta and United both rewarding award flights in a similar way, I suspect this is American’s attempt to test this as a program feature.
What do you make of this American AAdvantage promotion?
Delta is again offering MQDs for bookings through its hotel portal, which is great. BUT, the problem with the Delta offer and this AA offer is that they benefit the last-minute traveler. Award pricing and availability being what they are, my sense is that seasoned robust travelers have trips beyond the 45-day or 90-day window in these offers. Ben thinks these might become more broad-based, which is great. But, until then, I see limited benefit.
"Award" flights, are not free, they are paid with hard earned miles, who are not free either. Since miles are in fact a currency ( proof being you even have to pay taxes on them ), they should be equally considered as ony other currency when used to PAY for flights.
I'm Gold for a couple of years now but I opened the app and it doesn't appear that I am targeted for this promotion, at least for now?
I agree with you! Scary to think it could be a pathway to devaluation.
"Only award travel on American and American Eagle qualifies, and not award travel on partner airlines"
That's a hard pass for me!
I got the up to 200K LP bonus. Really not any use (not sure do the LP also turn into RDMs?) as I'll soon hit 250K LP for that level reward but won't hit 400K LP, the next level.
I got 15% of my points back, unfortunately, I booked 2 days ago and its more than 15% higher today.
Got the email... of course it is three days after I booked an award ticket that is no longer still available. Cest la vie.
I was targeted, but at 20 LPs per 1000 miles redeemed.
Yeah got the 20LPs too. It is sort of insultingly low.
better than the 0LPs that i got
Also got the 20LPs
Before I read this posting, I was feeling bad because my offer was "only" 50 LPs.
BTW, I'm currently PP (down from EP last year).
Exces want to get points off their books. I'm dumping my Barclays Silver card, racking up miles with an AA card just isn't worth it any more. The whole program is a hot pile of garbage and I don't trust anyone in the C suite. I'm not sure they could care any less about peoples loyalty.
ExPlat here, at 280,000 LP on the year, and I was not "targeted" for this promotion... talk about miffed!
AA's Management is so out of touch I do see them trying to move AAdvantage more toward SkyMiles and MileagePlus. I feel like Vasu (for all his faults) was the last one standing who recognized the value of AAdvantage- probably because he realized AA can't really compete on product so they had to lean on the loyalty program. Now that he's gone, who knows what is going to happen.
I got a earn 20 LPs per 1,000 miles redeemed, up to 200,000 bonus miles.
Same. I'm pretty miffed now honestly...
Yeah, ditto for me. Except it's only up to 20,000 bonus LP for me.