Update: This is now a permanent program, more details here.
Barclaycard has launched a new program for American Airline cardholders called ‘Flight Cents’. Flight Cents is a round up program that works like this, when you make a purchase they will round up your purchase to the nearest dollar and then use those cents to purchase miles at a rate of 1¢ per mile (note: some people are being offered a worse version where they only multiply it by 50% meaning you’d be paying 2¢ per mile). For example let’s say you make a purchase for $9.90, Barclaycard will round that up to $10 (and charge you that amount) and then 10 American Airline miles will be purchased for $0.10. Similarly if your purchase is $0.50 it will be rounded up to $1 and 50 miles would be purchased for $0.50. You can also set limits on how many miles you’d like to purchase per month as well.
At the moment this is just a pilot program and you must be invited to participate (e-mail subject line is “Spare change? Put it towards your next trip. Enroll today.”). You must enroll by September 30th, 2017 and the program will run from October 1st until March 31st, 2018. The problem with the current Barclaycard American Airline cards is that they earn 1x miles on all purchases, this means most people won’t want to use them for every day purchases when they could be earning 2-3% cash back. You could still use this to generate miles at a maximum of 2¢ per point by purchasing $0.50 Amazon gift cards (you’d also be getting the gift cards) or by even less by using other methods to generate lots of small transactions.
How useful this offer is will really depend on how much you value American Airline miles and what sort of transactions you usually make. Keep in mind that the Barclaycard Aviator Red currently has a 60,000 mile bonus (one of the best current credit card bonuses) but it’s unlikely you’d be offered this new flight cents program.
Hat tip to all the readers who sent me this when I was on vacation, sorry there are too many to individually name.
This deal is back, blog post at nomascoach on boardingarea
I enrolled in September and made a couple of purchases this week. But I see only the original purchase amount is posted to my account, and I don’t see anything round up. Am I the only one?
Thanks.
“the program will run from October 1st until March 31st, 2017”, I think you meant 2018 DoC 😉
It seems like it could be lucrative if you do it right. Although, my guess is that they will start to shut down or end the trial on accounts that take too much “AAdvantage” of it.
Thanks for that correction, whenever I type a year my fingers just auto type 2017. Need to be more careful now that we are getting closer to the end of the year and lots of promotions are running through 2018.
I echo what everyone says. AA award availability has been the worst among all 3 big airlines for about two years now. AA partner availability is also hard to come by if you want BIZ or First class. CX economy is still easy to get. AA card is my last card to considered if I want to apply for a new CC. I value AA miles at about .08 cent to 1 cent per mile. It is incredible hard to use them now day.
I had the opposite experience from you regarding CX economy award ticket. I could not get CX economy for this summer trip and next summer trip but I was able to get business saver award tickets. I travel to Asia every summer from the end of May to the end of July. I wanted economy but ended up in business. On the return trip we were able to get 3 business seats together. And it makes more complicated for hunting the award tickets when I don’t live at any AA hub, so I have one domestic flight to go either Dallas or Chicago from my hometown (luckily only 1-2 hour flight).
Quick Tip: If you don’t see this offer on your account info page try turning off your ad-blocker.
I used to value AA miles around 2 cents per mile, but now I place a value close to 1 cent per mile because the saver space has decreased dramatically in the last few years for my travel routes. I would not recommend buying and hoarding AA miles for future use beyond 12 months; there is too much uncertainty in how much AA will inflate award space in the future.
I have more AA miles than I will use in the next 12 months so I will skip this Barclay offer.
^^ This. Given that I usually use my AA miles for CX J from the US to Hong Kong @ 63000 miles for a $4000 ticket, I pretty consistently get 6 cents per mile of value out of them. This is definitely worth it.
AA miles value varies greatly depending on usage.
For domestic it sucks, but for partner F redemption to Asia, the value skyrockets.
So whether or not this makes sense really is case-dependent
Being in Hawaii, I find AA miles value at less than 1 cent per point, taking into account taxes and fees when booking miles to and from Hawaii to/from destinations where AA and their partners fly.
They partner with Hawaiian, for example, and economy costs 50k-65k AA miles to Japan in economy one way when the cheapest available flight is ~$600 round trip if you’re dates are flexible.
No saver availability to mainland even with their partners, so economy costs 40k-50k.
I signed up for this, but reduced my $ limit to $0.
“I signed up for this, but reduced my $ limit to $0.”
Why sign up if you’re not going to use it?
(Not being snarky, am genuinely curious)
Because I misunderstood the terms. I thought it was free
Seems like the cheapest you can buy these at are 1 cpp, right? Are they worth that much? Just got the aviator red (so probably won’t be targeted anyway) but have never redeemed AA miles.
Whoops, read it too quickly. I see you’re always buying them at 1 cpp. Still wondering if people value these more than that. I’ve seen how if you can find a milesaaver there are some good redemptions.
Not always, some people have 50% multipliers so it would be 2¢ per point for them.