Contents
The Offer
- American Airlines has another web special, this time with business class flights to New Zealand for 106,000 miles (plus taxes & fees of ~$75) round trip.
Our Verdict
Looks like these fares are available in January and mostly from regional airports (hubs don’t seem to be showing this rate for the most part).
Hat tip to Running With Miles
I never understand these posts. Why not include the actual routes in the post instead of making everyone waste their time trying to find the “web special?” That way once they no longer pull up, we’ll know we were too late.
Probably because AA doesn’t publish all the dates and flights.
January is a good time to visit NZ!
Went to book. Account locked. Pour one out for me.
Sorry that it happened to you too. I think AA is just hurting themselves. Citi won’t be buying AA miles going forward. I guess it is just a short term play to get miles off the books and make them look more profitable on paper and let the CEO keep his job another few quarters. But long term I see this being a disaster for AA.
Don’t speak for Citi.
Getting rid of churners will be a disaster for American? That’s funny.
That is the only reason they sold so many miles to Citi. With churners good luck selling miles to Citi. The earning rate is so low on those cards and it comes with an annual fee. No non churner would spend on them.
You think you know more about the accounting and profitability than the bean counters at American? That’s really funny.
Yeah they don’t seem very good at making profits.
If someone isn’t using the AA benefits (like free checked bag, etc) of the annual-fee AA card from Citi, then they can use the no-annual-fee MileUp card, and why doesn’t that make sense to use for grocery and AA purchases if that person has no other card that earns more than 2x in those categories? Remember, many non-churners are not likely to have all those cards that some of us might use for more than 2x for those categories.
But keep in mind that many no-status-at-AA people get and hold the AF cards because they value the AA benefits like a free checked bag more than they dislike the annual fee. I have lifetime AA Plat status (in large part due to churning AA cards from 2003 to 2011), plus I’ve learned to travel carry-on only, and thus I have no use for those benefits, but not everyone is like me in those ways.
Wow, that sucks. Sorry, man
Good! People like you ruin frequent flier programs for the rest of us.
Ok boomer. Go back to the AARP deals website.
Agism is not ok. Please stop your behavior
OK HENRY
Lol you are on Doctor of Credit site which outlines how to do this.
No, DoC outlines how to get good deals, not scam the system! Shame on you for dragging DoC name through the mud.
Opening multiple credit cards to earn the signup bonus is not scamming the system. You act like the people involved broke rules (which they didn’t) or at least acted unethically (which they also didn’t). If AA didn’t want the same person to get multiple cards, they should have worked with Citi to prevent that from happening.
If you didn’t want your house broken into, you should have worked to make sure it was protected like Fort Knox.
How do you think I learned about the AA mailers?
How exactly does legitimately earning miles through credit card signup bonuses ruin the frequent flyer program for you? The real villain in this situation is AA, who has shown a willingness to confiscate millions of miles despite no rules violations or abuse; they could do the same thing to you.
Did you use mailers or sell miles?
One of those things (selling miles) is very much against AA’s rules. The other thing (using mailers) is not only within the rules, but the very point of those mailers is to be used on new card applications. If those mailers were not intended to be transferred, then the companies involved needed to include language making them non-transferrable.
Looks like you have a lot of company. The _community director_ at FlyerTalk appears to have been caught up in this as well, plus at least two moderators.
Well that’s 20 minutes of my life I will never get back. Nothing. Not sure why I even did this the information is way too vague
So anyone with that many miles is sure to be shutdown before the flight takes off.
This is just an exercise to find them 😅
Disagree
Not if they earned AA miles gradually (and mostly years ago), including through non-mailer “slow” churning, and didn’t “earn and burn” but rather accumulated (waiting for good values).
It’s not that many miles. Two AA credit card applications (maybe one from Citi and one from Barclay) a year or two apart could have done it, and churning that “slowly” didn’t require mailers, which is what seems to have done most of those “shutdown people” in. Remember, until recently Citi’s public AA card applications had a 24-month rule, not a 48-month rule as it recently changed to.
Stop using reason. Unless you’re n-th degree churner that will stop at nothing to get as fat as possible as quickly as possible apparently you’re doing it wrong.
I depends which part of you you want to get “fat”. If you’re trying to get “fat” on the stuff that only Chase provides (UA miles, SW points, etc), then to stay under 5/24 you have to focus on business cards, and no one ever figured out a reliable way to trigger AA business mailers (some random people got them, but nobody was able to figure out how to get them if they weren’t already getting them), so those people who were focused on staying under 5/24 could have been ignoring mailers simply so that they could get “fat” elsewhere.
Meanwhile, if you’re fairly new to all this, you may have different needs than someone who’s been at it for many many years. Some people still have plenty of AA miles saved up from previously churning rounds which didn’t require creating fake AA accounts and using mailers at all. So not everyone who wanted AA miles decided to go after the mailer route, for multiple reasons, even if they liked being “fat”.
50k miles every two years just waiting for a redemption to New Zealand to come along. Lol that never happened.
That was just one example. The point is there are lots of different ways to earn many miles, and mailers was just one of them (the latest one at AA). Some people can have more than enough miles without having used mailers, while some other people may not have known of any way to get enough AA miles without using mailers.
So there’s no absolutes like “anyone” or “never” about this. Everyone’s situation is different.
It ins’t that many. I earned over 1 Million, butts in the seat. I know folks who earned several times that amount.
I am at 700k lifetime, and I stopped focusing/loyalty to AA many years ago.
I feel sorry for them having to be away from their families all the time. Luckily I never had to get a job requiring all that travel and earn my miles without having to be on the road half my life.