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AA miles to Europe October 2016
I’m planning on taking my mom on a Europe river cruise next October to celebrate her 80th birthday. My goal is two business class awards for a total of 200,000 miles. Right now I’m at 50,000 and need 150,000 more. In the past my strategy would be just to purchase the miles. Currently the cost via BuyAAMiles is 115,000+35,000 bonus at just over $3,000 plus tax. Any creative suggestions on how I can get to my goal any faster with minimum out of pocket spend? I’m not opposed to doing mileage runs but not crazy about sitting in economy to get there. I’m only Gold so don’t have much status for upgrading. Thanks for any advice you can offer!
Welcome [USER=1061]@Dave B[/USER] – do you have the AA credit cards? What about the SPG card? Those would quick ways to get a large number of points relatively quickly.
Beyond that, have you considered manufactured spending? This is the process of buying things (often Visa gift cards) that can be turned back into cash relatively quickly – and then using the cash to pay your credit card bill. Travel Codex, another Boarding Area blog, has a whole Forum section dedicated to manufactured spending. It’s free to join and you can learn a great deal in a short amount of time.
Also, don’t limit yourself to just AA! You can always use the AA miles for one direction, and another currency for the other, which might make it easier to accrue the needed miles.
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