AA miles program
 

There has been a few threads regarding frequent flyer miles and their status in the event of Chapter 11 with major airlines. I hear that AA might be heading in that direction. Does anyone know the latest info? What happens to the accumulated miles in that event? How to cash out? We have enough for 2 to go to Hawaii, and were planning to use them later this year. Please advise, thx.

As far as American going into Chapter 11, at this point it remains to be seen. I think that they use the threat of Chapter 11 to try and get deals with the unions. Even if they do file for bankruptcy, the frequent flier program will operate like normal as it has with both United and US Airways during Chapter 11. I think that US Airways is supposed to emerge from bankruptcy tomorrow. The only time you need to worry about losing your miles is if the airline liquidates and goes completely out of business, as United is rumored to by the end of June.

If you're planning to use your miles to Hawaii, you should start now. Hawaii has been, is, and will be the hardest award ticket to get. I'm not sure how many miles you have, but it's almost impossible to do the PlanAAhead ticket to Hawaii. Most people book that ticket a year ahead. It's a very popular award ticket. Good Luck!<BR>Don't worry about the program. It's the only profitable division of AA right now, so it will be around till the day AA dies, and even then other airlines would probably pick up most if not all of it.<BR>For more info also look at the few discusiions of UA miles program. There are suggestions what to do, if you are really nervous and want to transfer them. You could do the same with AA miles in most cases. <BR>If you feel generous, the ShAAreMiles program is back, you could transfer up to 60K miles at 15K per account to your family, friends and maybe even me :-) .<BR>Let me know if you need my account number :-) .<BR>Good luck!!!

AAFrequentFlyer, this is a sincere question: in what sense can you say the FF program is AA's most &quot;profitable&quot;? In the most literal sense, they do not receive revenue for the miles given nor for the seats and upgrades given in return for the miles. I am currently Gold in AA and have every reason to want the program to survive, but -- for example -- how can it be benefitting AA that I buy a lot of Kellogg's Shredded Mini-Wheats and charge a lot on my AA credit card to get extra miles (yes, I know they don't count toward Gold, but they help re:other stuff)?<BR><BR>And, by the way, I also have a UA credit card that I stopped using a while ago, and I just got a flurry of promotional stuff on that card -- but if UA gets broken up and pieced out to other airlines, it's not going to do me much good to use that card for miles after any form of &quot;liquidation.&quot; Are they really begging us to accumlate points/miles so we can sit in one of their seats and fly for free in a debt-ridden plane?

soccr,<BR>It's simple really. When the mileage program started, it was a loyalty reward program, but over the last 20 years or so, it changed to a money making marketing scheme. The miles you get from Kelloggs, VISA, or whatever are bought from AA by those companies. It generates hundreds of millions of $ for AA. For example, imagine some novice that sees a Kelloggs box, buys about 10 of them, signs up for AAdvantage and sends the coupons to Kelloggs. Kelloggs has to pay AA for 1000 miles to get them posted to the members account. Now the same person maybe has a domestic flight coming up, so s/he thinks this is great. The flight turns out to be about 2500 miles. Well now this person doesn't fly regularly, and now it hits them that to get even the lowest award it will take years. So for obvious reasons these miles will probably expire after 3 years, and no harm done, but AA collected $10 from Kelloggs(or whatever their deal is). Now multiply that by millions and you could see how profitable this could be. So while AA gets the money now, they don't necessarly give anything in return, at least for awhile, or maybe never. <BR>I believe that particular division of AMR reported something like $500M profit last year. Obviously that money disappears with the other sectors of the company, but you see how profitable that part is.<BR>AAdvantage program is the biggest one out there right now with something like 125M members. I can't believe others wiould not pick it up as the marketing possibilities are endless. In reality, maybe 1/4 of these members ever use the miles, the rest just never acquire enough, or let the miles expire, but still they do have the spending habits, addresses, etc.. in their computer for all the members, which is a goldmine for marketing many different corporatiions products.<BR>

Very interesting, thanks. Is there also revenue generated w/in the Citibank credit card tie-in?

Any and every partner has to pay AA for miles, so yes Citibank buys miles just like everybody else. Hotels, car rentals that give miles for stays and rentals, IDine, Flowers.com, the list is loooonnngggg.

thx for all the replies, i will finalize vacation scheduling soon and look into getting the tickets. can't wait!

Good news....according to the Chicago Times it looks like AA will be avoiding bankruptcy! Now lets route for UA to survive as well.