So I began the journey of collecting as many loyalty earlier this month in an attempt to earn top tier American Airlines Status with 0 flying in 2020. I thought this experiment would be pretty fun and hopefully I would be able to at least earn 125,000 loyalty points for American Airlines Platinum Pro. Well three weeks in, I’m sitting at 4,707 loyalty points, while waiting on another 3,511 to post hopefully bringing my total to 8,059. Throw in the additional 4.5k spent I put on my new AA Citi Business Mastercard, I should be sitting at about 12.5-13k in loyalty from this month. While this is great, here are a few takeaways and updates.
For American Airlines Announcement on Loyalty Points Click HERE
How did I earn most of loyalty points?
Shopping portals was the easiest way to earn additional points. I run a couple of small businesses and purchased a few things through the shopping portal. On a few occassions, American Airlines was offering 10 miles per dollar, but United was offering a whopping 20 miles per dollar so I shopped through United. Even though I am trying to accumulate a significant sum of loyalty points, I try to avoid missing out on better offers.
The other way I earned a large sum of loyalty points was through credit card spend to meet a signup bonus. While the current offer of 65k AA miles for 4k spend on the Citi AA Advantage Bizz Card is no world beater, I felt the need to diversify and accumulate other airline currencies. I typically stick to collecting Amex or Chase points so growing my AA miles stash( I burned all my United miles so I will be looking to earn some as well) will allow me to have more flexibility when booking/
My Takeaways
The AA Advantage shopping portal is a complete mess. I have had some trouble getting my miles to post and only after creating a help ticket, I was able to receive credit for these purchases. In stark contrast, I seldom have any issues with Rakuten. Although most airline shopping portals are operated by Cartera, a subsidiary of Rakuten, I find them to be inconsistent with tracking the rewards even though the AA Shopping Button congratulates me on making a purchase.
In addition, after a couple weeks I feel that earning 125,000 loyalty points does seem somewhat reasonable but will definitely be tougher than expected. For some odd reason, the AA shopping portal doesn’t offer some of the incredible flash deals found via United or Rakuten. I was able to earn 20 miles per dollar when purchasing a pair of cleats, while AA only offered 10 miles per dollar. Small differences like these will make it slightly tougher to hit the goal of Platinum Pro as I started two months late.
Recap
Earning loyalty points will be somewhat of a challenge as I am trying to balance the opportunity cost of earning loyalty points vs other currencies. My main source of points will be the AA shopping portal. From everyday business expenses to flash deals, the portal is where I will be earning the bulk of my loyalty points. Here is my current breakdown and as you can see I’m about 50% of the way to AA Gold which is the lowest level of elite status.
To See American Airlines Status Benefits click here
Current Loyalty Point Count: 4,707
Current Pending AA Shopping Loyalty Points: 3,214
Current AA Mastercard Pending Loyalty Points: 4,658
Estimated Loyalty Points (3/27): 12,579
