Questions and Answers

Well this sucks. :/

So I have an AA branded card that I WAS racking up everything on (bills, mortgage, etc) and had the Citi prestige and premiere for everyday spend/travel to supplement. With the new devalued chart, I’m wondering: Is it worth keeping my current strategy?

Is it worth staying with American at all?

I JUST started the points game and it stings to see the few AA points I have get nerfed like this so soon. And I was about to qualify for Gold Status in AA! Grrrrrr…..

All moping aside, what cards should I start using to now? There’s no specific place I travel to and the only place I’d really like to visit with points is Australia (like everyone else). I’m still planning on getting the Chase Saphire card next year, and I WAS going to get the Citi AAdvantage but now it doesn’t seem all that attractive. Singapore/Kris flyer is looking more and more luctrative now.

I’ll DEFINITELY be planning a trip with miles I have in my AA account TONIGHT.

[USER=1075]@ezikyle[/USER] First, welcome! Second, take a deep breath :).

Devaluations are part of this hobby. They happen on a fairly regular basis and AA has been expected for a few months now. The key part of the hobby is accruing miles as cheaply as possible. The easiest way to do this is to hit your credit card sign up bonuses. The next way is to use the right cards for everyday spend. You also have the option of engaging in MS.

Once you hit the bonus requirement on your AA and other similar cards, that should go in your sock drawer unless you need to use it for a specific feature. For e.g., the most effective card to earn AA miles with everyday non-bonused spend is actually the AmEx SPG which will give you 1.25miles/$ when you transfer in chunks of 20k or higher. The other advantage in banking your points in a transferable currency like UR/SPG/MR/TY is that you are somewhat insulated from the sudden changes to a particular currency.

So if you are an avid traveler, continue to hit the cards with the best available offers and bank them while accruing transferable points with your other spend. And book plenty of travel, after all that’s what we do this for! 🙂

I feel your pain. I saw the devaluation coming but this combined with the SPG acquisition yesterday was a blow to the gut for the way I like to travel. AA were my favorite award redemption options and the SPG Amex was the way I earned them since it cost me about 25% less miles when you account for the transfer bonus. I used to be able to get two CX first class tickets for a total of 110,000 Starpoints when account for the transfer bonus. When SPG goes away, plus the devaluation it’s literally going to cost me double the amount of miles, 220,000, for those same tickets.

While AA miles will still be useful in some ways, I’ll probably be transferring miles to AS a lot more, and sign up for the AS credit card when SPG goes away. For premium cabin travel, AS redemptions are going to be a lot better value after March 22nd.

OK, I’m better now. 😀

So it looks like I’ll be trying to use my current AA miles in the next few months and then concentrating on accruing Alaska miles. I’ll still keep the TY points for misc travel.

Thanks for the help everyone!

On a lot of AA flights you can actually credit your AS Mileage Plan account. We’ll see if the earning rates change but as of right now you’ll still earn 1 mile per mile flown on AA when crediting to AS. For those cheap Y fares bought using TY points, it’s a no brainer.

[URL]https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mileage-plan/partners/american.aspx[/URL]