Citi AAdvantage Globe Card Flight Streak Loyalty Points Bonus Explained

Link: Learn more about the Citi® / AAdvantage® Globe™ Mastercard®

The Citi® / AAdvantage® Globe™ Mastercard® (review) is American Airlines’ brand new premium credit card. The card has a huge welcome bonus, which makes it worth considering, and it’s one of the reasons I already applied for the card.

While the card has a steep $350 annual fee, it offers lots of perks that can help offset that, whether you’re an occasional or frequent flyer on American. For those looking to qualify for elite status with American AAdvantage, one of the most interesting aspects of the card is the ability to earn Loyalty Points.

While most co-branded American AAdvantage credit cards let you earn Loyalty Points, this card offers the ability to earn 15,000 bonus Loyalty Points per elite year unrelated to spending, which is a unique perk to this card. In this post, I want to take a closer look at how that works.

Earning Loyalty Points with the Citi AAdvantage Globe Card

Loyalty Points is the name of the system by which you can earn elite status with American AAdvantage. Status with the airline no longer has anything to do with how much you fly, but rather has to do with how many Loyalty Points you rack up, regardless of whether it’s from flying or non-flying activities, like credit card spending.

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

• AAdvantage Gold status requires 40,000 Loyalty Points
• AAdvantage Platinum status requires 75,000 Loyalty Points
• AAdvantage Platinum Pro status requires 125,000 Loyalty Points
• AAdvantage Executive Platinum status requires 200,000 Loyalty Points

Also keep in mind that American has the Loyalty Point Rewards program, allowing you to earn extra perks, like systemwide upgrades, for passing certain thresholds.

So, how does the Citi AAdvantage Globe Card factor into all of this? Let’s talk about how you can use the card to earn Loyalty Points for spending, and also how you can earn Loyalty Points just for having the card.

Earn one Loyalty Point per dollar spent

Like most American Airlines credit cards, the Citi AAdvantage Globe Card offers one Loyalty Point per eligible dollar spent on the card. In other words, spending $200,000 on the card would earn you 200,000 Loyalty Points (and in turn, Executive Platinum).

Note that miles earned from the welcome bonus, as well as miles earned from spending multipliers, don’t earn you additional Loyalty Points. For example, the card earns 3x AAdvantage miles on American Airlines purchases. So while you’d get three redeemable miles per dollar spent on those purchases, you’d only earn one Loyalty Point per dollar spent.

Earn up to 15,000 bonus Loyalty Points per year

This is where the Citi AAdvantage Globe Card gets interesting, and offers a unique perk you won’t find with other cards. The card has what’s referred to as the Flight Streak bonus, offering up to 15,000 bonus Loyalty Points per elite year (which runs from the beginning of March until the end of February of the following year).

The way this works, you earn 5,000 bonus Loyalty Points after every four qualifying American flights, and you can take advantage of this up to three times per year. In other words, if you take at least 12 eligible American flights per year, you’d earn 15,000 bonus Loyalty Points.

Just to cover some of the basic questions people may have about this perk:

• Only flights taken after becoming the primary cardmember on the Citi AAdvantage Globe Card qualify
• Each eligible segment counts as a flight for these purposes, so if you fly a one-way with one connection, that would be considered two eligible flights
• Qualifying flights include those that are marketed or operated by American or American Eagle, and which are eligible to earn AAdvantage miles; in other words, you need to credit your flights to AAdvantage, and award flights don’t qualify
• Bonus Loyalty Points will officially post within 8-10 weeks of taking an eligible flight; however, in practice they likely post much faster than that
• There’s no need to actually charge the flight purchase to the card, so it’s just a function of having a primary card account linked to an AAdvantage account

Stack this with 20,000 additional Loyalty Points per year

Let me mention that you can stack this perk with the extra Loyalty Points benefit offered by the Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard® (review). That card offers 20,000 bonus Loyalty Points when you pass 90,000 Loyalty Points per year, as follows:

• Earn 10,000 bonus Loyalty Points when you earn 50,000 Loyalty Points in a status qualification year
• Earn 10,000 bonus Loyalty Points when you earn 90,000 Loyalty Points in a status qualification year

These two perks can stack, so that means if you have both the Citi AAdvantage Executive Card and Citi AAdvantage Globe Card, you could earn 35,000 bonus Loyalty Points per year.

How valuable is this Flight Streak Loyalty Points perk?

If you’re going for elite status with American AAdvantage, how valuable is the opportunity to earn Loyalty Points with the Citi AAdvantage Globe Card?

When it comes to earning one Loyalty Point per dollar spent, I’ve written in the past about my thoughts on the value proposition of that:

• I don’t think it’s worth spending your way all the way to elite status, though at the margins I think it could be worthwhile (say you’d earn 125K Loyalty Points through flying, and then earn 75K Loyalty Points with a credit card, to earn Executive Platinum)
• There’s just such an opportunity cost to spending on an American credit card. vs. another card that might be more rewarding in terms of everyday spending, bonus categories, etc.

I think the more interesting question is the value proposition of earning up to 15,000 Loyalty Points just for having the card. If you’d otherwise take at least 12 eligible American flights per year, is that alone a reason you should get this card?

• The card has a $350 annual fee, so if you don’t value any of the perks of the card, that would be like “buying” Loyalty Points for just over two cents each (without any corresponding redeemable miles); I wouldn’t consider that to be an amazing deal, but at the margins, I’m sure many people would find it to be worthwhile
• Loyalty Points are most valuable if they help you reach a specific threshold (either for elite status or Loyalty Point Rewards), though keep in mind that the higher your Loyalty Points total, the higher your upgrade priority
• Personally I wouldn’t get the card exclusively for the 15,000 bonus Loyalty Points, though rather I’d view it as part of a suite of benefits; fortunately the card has lots of other benefits that can help offset the annual fee, from a $99 companion certificate, to up to $100 in annual American inflight credits, to an up to $100 annual Splurge Credit, and much more

Bottom line

The Citi AAdvantage Globe Card is American’s newest credit card. In addition to the card offering one Loyalty Point per dollar spent, you can also receive up to 15,000 bonus Loyalty Points per year just for being a cardmember, assuming you fly 12 revenue American segments per year. This is thanks to the card’s Flight Streak bonus, which offers 5,000 bonus Loyalty Points per elite year, up to three times.

This has the potential to be a major consideration for picking up this card, so it’s definitely something to keep in mind.

What do you make of the Loyalty Points perks offered by the Citi AAdvantage Globe Card?