Citi American Airlines Business Credit Card: 7 Reasons To Apply

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 seven 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 huge, and one of the best credit card bonuses out there.

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 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.

Earn AAdvantage elite status with spending

Major changes have been made to the American AAdvantage program as of 2022. With these changes, it’s possible to earn American AAdvantage elite status exclusively (or partly) through credit card spending. While the welcome bonus won’t count towards your Loyalty Points total, spending on the card will, so the spending required to earn the welcome bonus would get you Loyalty Points.

Now, personally I don’t think it’s worth it for everyone to try to earn elite status mostly through credit card spending. However, the reality is that this is a huge change to how status is earned, and I know many people are now spending significant amounts on AAdvantage credit cards in order to earn elite status.

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.

$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 towards 5/24

If you want to apply for Chase credit cards there’s the 5/24 rule, which means 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 towards that limit. Most business credit card applications, including Citi business card applications, don’t count towards that limit. This is because these cards don’t show on your personal credit report. If you want a great credit card but don’t want to increase your count towards that limit, 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:

American Airlines AAdvantage bonus miles are not available if you have received a new account bonus for a CitiBusiness / AAdvantage Platinum Select account in the past 48 months.

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.

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.

First checked bag fee

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.

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 new Loyalty Points system, spending on this card will now also count towards elite status, which I know will interest many members.

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