If you have either the Barclaycard Aviator Red or Barclaycard Aviator Silver card, you can now take advantage of the “Get 10% of Your Redeemed Miles Back” benefit. You don’t need to have receive your new Aviator cards for this benefit to have taken effect (when you log into Barclaycard website, it should show you the new card you’ll be receiving shortly). Keep in mind, it is possible to ask for a upgrade. If you have the anniversary bonus you might lose this.
The Aviator pages clearly state that “[t]hese benefits will become available after the airline Frequent Flyer Programs combine.” Since this combination has now finished, it makes sense that this benefit is now active. Reddit user unfallible has already had some of their miles rebated (image below).
[Read:Â Barclaycard American Airlines Credit Cards: Blue, Red, Silver and Aviator. Details On Each Card]
How The Benefit Works
Basically when you redeem your American Airline miles you’ll receive 10% of those miles back, so if you booked an award flight that cost 25,000 miles you’d receive 2,500 miles rebated back to your account. There is a limit of 10,000 miles per calendar year that you can receive. E.g if you redeem 100,000 miles you’d receive a total of 10,000 miles back. If you redeemed 110,000 miles you’d be capped at 10,000 miles in rebates.
Will The Rebate Stack?
Citi offer the Citi Platinum Select which also offers the same 10% rebate (it also has the cap of 10,000 miles). Obviously it would be great if these two rebates stacked which would allow you to get a 20% rebate for a total of 20,000 miles. Reddit user ffflllyyyeeerrr has the Aviator Red & Platinum Select and recently redeemed 25,000 miles, this is what their rebate looked like:
As you can see this looks to have confirmed my understanding of how this rebate will work if you have both cards. You should be able to receive a total of 20,000 miles rebated, but only 10% at a time and this will be split evenly between the two cards.
E.g if you redeem 50,000 miles you’ll receive 2,500 miles rebated due to your Barclayscard and another 2,500 miles due to your Citi card. You can then redeem another 150,000 miles before you’ve maxed out the benefit. Obviously it’s possible that this is incorrect and you’re still limited to a cap of 10,000 miles regardless of whether you have both cards, but I doubt this is the case.
Update:Â Reader Glenn recently redeemed 165,000 miles and has both cards. Unfortunately he only received a total rebate of 10,000 miles which means that you cannot stack this bonus in anyway (screenshot below, the total of 12,000 is because he received a spending bonus of 2,000 miles separate to the rebate). If your experience confirms Glenn’s (or is in contradiction with Glenn’s) we’d love to know in the comments.
[Read:Â All Of The American Airlines Credit Cards Compared]
View From The Wing posted a working link for the US Airways card, so you might want to grab that if you want to get it before it goes away for good. Lots of people still have referral links in this Flyertalk thread as well, so consider using one of those if you’re feeling altruistic.
If you have the new Aviator Red/Silver card and the Citi Platinum Select and you redeem some miles, feel free to share if the rebates stack or not in the comments below.
