buying air miles

[Tanzanite]

Hi has anyone brought air miles is it worth it was looking to purchase from American Airlines .

 

[platamama]

Generally it's only worth buying the air miles to top off an account so that you have the miles for a specific award redemption. If it's just a speculative purchase, the lowest I've seen AA miles go for is $0.015 per mile.

Currently AA is selling miles with a bonus (not the best bonus they've ever offered) so you can do the math to see if it makes sense in your case. As a comparison, if you bought 20,000 AAmiles right now, it comes with a 7,000 bonus and would cost $531 (plus some extra fees). 25,000 AA miles can get you a domestic round trip with SAAver fares. Right now, Starwood is selling Starpoints at a discount until March 16. If you buy 20,000 Starpoints ($455) and transfer them to your AA account, you would get 25,000 AA miles because of the bonus that Starwood throws in.

Alternatively, if you're able to sign up for a Barclay Aviator or Citi AAdvantage credit card for the signup bonus, that's the cheapest way to accrue the most AA miles. (Assuming you pay off your bill in full, yada yada yada.)

 

[Tanzanite]

Thank you i have an aviator card i am taking my kids to see their brother in Asia in July my son is over 6 feet so was trying to get miles to upgrade as economy seats hes suished long legs .I do have 160.000 so need to see how many more id need been saving them for about 2 yrs .

 

[NotUrsula]

I'll agree with the PP when it comes to AA miles.

For anyone else reading this, however, I want to note that on SWA it can be a very good option if you are in the position of buying tickets for non-household members and are worried about cancellation. While SWA will credit any fare purchase you make in that situation, they restrict the use of the credit to the person that it was originally purchased for, but that is not the case with miles. With SWA, if you have to cancel a ticket that was purchased on miles, the full amount is credited back to the BUYER. I find this especially useful when buying tickets for older extended family members who don't fly much and have a tendency to back out of trips.

 

[gottalovepluto]

Do not buy American Airline miles unless you are ready to immediately book something or you're very familiar with the rewards program or are looking to top off your account because your a few thousand miles short of a redemption you've been eyeing. Always remember that award space available right now could be gone in 5 mins, or it could be there for the next 5 months. And just because you see the price on an Award Chart doesn't mean it will be available to book, AA only puts out a limited about of seats to be sold with miles, heck the plane could be empty and not have any seats available to be booked with miles. I would NEVER purchase American Airlines miles in order to book a trip in the future. (I have my AA miles from credit cards, so I have a little familiarity with their program and have used the miles before. Luckily I'm single and have very flexible travel dates so I was actually able to use some of those miles!)

ETA: missed your second update, saving for 2 years from now, in your shoes I'd be looking at hitting up CitiAA cards for the bonus miles. I wouldn't be buying miles, not yet. AA runs mile "sales" fairly frequently.

 

[Judique]

Do not buy American Airline miles unless you are ready to immediately book something or you're very familiar with the rewards program or are looking to top off your account because your a few thousand miles short of a redemption you've been eyeing. Always remember that award space available right now could be gone in 5 mins, or it could be there for the next 5 months. And just because you see the price on an Award Chart doesn't mean it will be available to book, AA only puts out a limited about of seats to be sold with miles, heck the plane could be empty and not have any seats available to be booked with miles. I would NEVER purchase American Airlines miles in order to book a trip in the future. (I have my AA miles from credit cards, so I have a little familiarity with their program and have used the miles before. Luckily I'm single and have very flexible travel dates so I was actually able to use some of those miles!)

ETA: missed your second update, saving for 2 years from now, in your shoes I'd be looking at hitting up CitiAA cards for the bonus miles. I wouldn't be buying miles, not yet. AA runs mile "sales" fairly frequently.

No, the poster is going in July and has been saving for 2 years. I know you will have better advice once you reread it - I know nothing about AA, just familiar with SW. But, they may still have time to get a CC bonus....again not familiar with AA booking so back to you, @gottalovepluto

 

[gottalovepluto]

No, the poster is going in July and has been saving for 2 years. I know you will have better advice once you reread it - I know nothing about AA, just familiar with SW. But, they may still have time to get a CC bonus....again not familiar with AA booking so back to you, @gottalovepluto

Wow. I'm an idiot. Thank you for catching!

OP, here's the info on upgrading with miles on AA: https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage-program/miles/redeem/award-travel/upgrade-with-miles.jsp

First thing, check if your ticket class qualifies to be upgraded with miles to find out if this is an option. (If you buy your ticket with miles you cannot upgrade it.) I have never upgraded with miles, just outright purchased tickets so I would research to find out if this upgrade with miles option is always available or sometimes available (head over to FlyerTalk, you should be able to find info on this process there). After your research only you can decide if it's worth it to buy the miles to upgrade the ticket. (And I really liked @platamama 's Starwood comparison right now! Depending on how fast points transfer from Starwood to AA that might be the way to go.)

 

[platamama]

First thing, check if your ticket class qualifies to be upgraded with miles to find out if this is an option. (If you buy your ticket with miles you cannot upgrade it.)

Actually, you can upgrade award tickets to the next class and pay with miles for the difference in fare IF there are available awards.

I just did this with our return trip from Europe coming up this summer. I redeemed SAAver Econ tickets one way for our family, miles came out of DH's account (3 x 30K AAmiles). Then I stalked the AA website daily for Business SAAver tickets with the same origin AND destination (you can change AA award tickets dates & times with no fee as long as the origin and destination remain the same). One day I was lucky and found Business SAAver tickets (3 x 57,500 AAmiles) available and called Customer Service to make the change. I was able to upgrade us to Business class (difference of 3 x 27,500 AAMiles), but was short a few thousand miles and had to buy them then and there over the phone. AA was running one of its bonus mile sales, and I bought the lowest amount that earned bonus miles, paid for it on the Aviator card (which incidently earned 2x miles on the purchase). The taxes and fees were about $15 more on this itinerary so that got paid too - the original amount paid got credited back to the Citi card used originally and then the new taxes and fees were charged to that Citi card. It did take about a week for all the changes to be official, and a phone call to Citi to approve the new charges (I don't know why they flagged them, I mean c'mon it was a Citi AAdvantage card used to make a purchase at AA).

I would think you could use this for AAnytime awards too, since those are always available but also very pricy awards tickets, so you'd need to see if the math makes sense.

 

[wishuponastar1984]

Actually, you can upgrade award tickets to the next class and pay with miles for the difference in fare IF there are available awards.

I just did this with our return trip from Europe coming up this summer. I redeemed SAAver Econ tickets one way for our family, miles came out of DH's account (3 x 30K AAmiles). Then I stalked the AA website daily for Business SAAver tickets with the same origin AND destination (you can change AA award tickets dates & times with no fee as long as the origin and destination remain the same). One day I was lucky and found Business SAAver tickets (3 x 57,500 AAmiles) available and called Customer Service to make the change. I was able to upgrade us to Business class (difference of 3 x 27,500 AAMiles), but was short a few thousand miles and had to buy them then and there over the phone. AA was running one of its bonus mile sales, and I bought the lowest amount that earned bonus miles, paid for it on the Aviator card (which incidently earned 2x miles on the purchase). The taxes and fees were about $15 more on this itinerary so that got paid too - the original amount paid got credited back to the Citi card used originally and then the new taxes and fees were charged to that Citi card. It did take about a week for all the changes to be official, and a phone call to Citi to approve the new charges (I don't know why they flagged them, I mean c'mon it was a Citi AAdvantage card used to make a purchase at AA).

I would think you could use this for AAnytime awards too, since those are always available but also very pricey awards tickets, so you'd need to see if the math makes sense.

That isn't really upgrading per se when talking to airline geeks. That is just exchanging your economy ticket and purchasing a new biz class award ticket. Had those three seats been available when you first were searching you would still have paid the same 57,500 per ticket one way.

Upgrading is generally thought of as purchasing a ticket with $$$ then using miles or an upgrade instrument (GPU, RPU, VIPOW to name a few depending on the airline program) to move to the next class of service. In days of yore you used to just be able to apply miles to any paid ticket to upgrade but airlines have gotten wind of an additional revenue stream so now most will require you to purchase a minimum fare class (W on United) to even entertain the option to use miles or an instrument to upgrade. Then even once you have likely paid more for a chance to upgrade you now have to pay a fee PLUS miles to move to the next cabin of service. The rub is that if your upgrade doesn't clear then you basically overpaid for a ticket just for the opportunity to enter the lottery.

My advice to most is just going ahead and hopefully, save up enough miles to fly in the premium cabin you prefer when you look at what base ticket + copay + miles costs these days.