American AAdvantage has just made it more affordable to transfer AAdvantage miles to other members…
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Transfer AAdvantage miles to other members for less
Just about all airline loyalty programs let you transfer your miles to other members, though often it comes at a cost. In the case of American AAdvantage, the program has historically charged 1.5 cents per mile for this privilege.
The program has just reduced the cost of that by ~67%, and you can now transfer AAdvantage miles to other members for 0.5 cents each. You can transfer miles in increments of 1,000 to 200,000 miles, and there’s no additional transaction fee.
This seems like a logical change — previously the cost was so high that it almost never made sense to transfer miles to others (1.5 cents is what I value AAdvantage miles at), while now there are situations where this could make sense. So this is not only a more customer friendly policy, but I’m sure this will ultimately generate more revenue for the program.
When should you transfer AAdvantage miles to others?
Keep in mind that you can freely redeem AAdvantage miles for others. So if you just want to book an award ticket for someone else, you can do so out of your account without issue. Note that this needs to be a gift, because bartering miles violates the terms of the program.
The primary situation where it would make sense to transfer AAdvantage miles to another member is in a situation where combining balances would get you enough miles for a high value award. For example, if you have 50,000 AAdvantage miles and your significant other has 20,000 AAdvantage miles, it could be worth paying the $100 in transfer fees in order to book a Qatar Airways business class award ticket, which would cost thousands of dollars in cash.
I suppose this could also be valuable if you have a friend or family member who has an account with just a small balance of miles that they don’t plan on using.
Bottom line
American AAdvantage has lowered the cost to transfer miles between accounts from 1.5 cents to 0.5 cents per mile. This is much more reasonable pricing, and now there are situations where there could be value in moving miles from one account to another.
Could you see yourself using this AAdvantage mileage transfer opportunity?
This is huge!
I credit all our OW flights to BA, because they allow family pooling. But now I'm going to switch back to AA, because I find the miles much more valuable, even with a 0.5cent / mile fee to combine.
I hope other airlines follow suit.