How To Reinstate Expired American AAdvantage Miles Without Paying A Fortune

I was super bummed yesterday when I realized that I let my dad down, and that he had a substantial sum of AAdvantage miles expire. I just couldn’t accept that mistake, though in the process, I made a positive discovery that might come in handy for some other people…

Grrrr, my dad’s American AAdvantage miles expired!

I’m sure I’m not the only one in the OMAAT community who is responsible for keeping track of the miles & points for my family. My dad has an upcoming trip on American, so I logged into his AAdvantage account to check the details and make sure there were no schedule changes, and my heart sank when I saw the below message, about how he had 141,977 miles expire.

I clicked the “Reactivate miles” button, and there was the opportunity to reinstate those miles for $1,000.

Gosh, that was frustrating:

• I was angry at myself for letting the miles expire; ever since American AAdvantage stopped allowing accounts to be tracked through AwardWallet, I guess I just failed to keep track of his account
• My dad is actually an AAdvantage million miler, and he has flown American several times over the past year, though consistently using Atmos Rewards points that I redeemed with him
• So I guess because he was flying American, it was just never top of mind for me that his miles were close to expiring
• If push came to shove, I absolutely would pay $1,000 for nearly 142,000 AAdvantage miles, since that’s like acquiring them for 0.7 cents each, roughly half of what I value them; but it also sucks to just throw $1,000 out the window when something shouldn’t have happened in the first place

As a reminder, AAdvantage miles expire after 24 months of inactivity, which isn’t exactly an unreasonable policy. Any mileage earning or redemption activity resets the expiration, and the easiest way to extend that expiration is to just donate 1,000 miles to charity.

Obviously this frustrated me to no end, but let me just say that I actually don’t mind AAdvantage’s expiration policy, at least conceptually. Delta SkyMiles and United MileagePlus miles never expire, and while that’s great, ultimately I view that as coming at some cost.

After all, there’s a cost to not expiring miles, and I imagine it takes away from the programs being rewarding in other ways. I’m all for investing in those who are actually engaged in the program. But of course that doesn’t mean I’m going to be happy when miles do expire. 😉

The secret way to reinstate expired AAdvantage miles

My dad and I called AAdvantage customer service to ask if there are any ways to reinstate AAdvantage miles, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that there is. Essentially, American offers a challenge for reinstating AAdvantage miles, with two options:

• You can open a Citi AAdvantage credit card (specifically, the personal Platinum one) and then earn 1,000 Loyalty Points within three months
• You can earn 2,000 Loyalty Points through any means within three months

You have to choose which option you’d like to register for, because miles are then automatically reinstated after completing qualifying activity. And regarding the first option, it was explained to me that even if he got denied for the card, he’d still have his miles reinstated if he earned 1,000 Loyalty Points.

Let me emphasize that this is what was explained to us, and there’s of course no guarantee that this will be around forever, and I imagine there’s a time limit here for how long it’s available (my dad’s miles expired around three months ago, for what it’s worth).

It goes without saying that these are much better options than just outright spending $1,000:

• If you go the credit card route, you can take advantage of a great welcome bonus, and then get all those miles reinstated as an extra bonus
• Earning 2,000 Loyalty Points really isn’t hard, especially with things like the AAdvantage eShopping portal; there are some retailers offering 10x miles per dollar spent, so spending $200 would unlock that, and you get something in the process

Bottom line

Having miles expire is incredibly frustrating, especially when it’s a sizable balance of them. I’m disappointed in myself that I let my dad’s AAdvantage miles expire by mistake — I try to track all points currencies, but sometimes things slip through the cracks.

American wanted $1,000 to reinstate the roughly 142,000 AAdvantage miles, which would’ve been a good deal if that was the only option to get the miles back. However, as it turns out, American offers a challenge of sorts for those who had miles expire.

My dad was given the option of either earning 2,000 Loyalty Points within three months, or of earning 1,000 Loyalty Points plus opening an AAdvantage credit card.

Hopefully this is useful for someone else, though ideally you just won’t find yourself in this situation. 😉