As we head towards the end of April, I finally hit enough loyalty points to qualify for low level American Airlines Elite Status. I wanted to continue to give monthly updates and be as transparent as possible on my journey to “Chase AA Elite Status“. The lowest tier of American Elite Status, AA Gold, requires 30,000 loyalty points and I was able to hit that via a combination of credit card spend and business purchases. Best of all, I still have taken 0 flights on American or one world airlines this year! Here’s the update!
March Recap
March was a bit of a mess. I was supposed to earn about 7700 loyalty via shopping portals, but only ended up getting 4,707. I was missing about 3700 miles which were later added but coded as “bonus points” thus I did not get any loyalty points. In addition I also earned about 4,658 loyalty points from meeting the signup bonus on my Citi AA Business Credit Card giving me about 9400 points in all.
April Update
So far with more than a week to go in April, I earned about 25,00 loyalty points giving me a grand total of 34,613 loyalty points thus far. This was double the previous month and I didn’t really spend on my AA Business Card. This card has been retired to the drawer as I’m working to manufacture Hyatt Globalist for 2023. Since I have already earned gold in under two months, I’m turning my eyes towards at least accumulating 125,000 loyalty points for the year for AA Platinum Pro.
How did I earn Loyalty Points
Shopping portals were the main source of loyalty points in April. As a small business owner, I purchased most of my supplies and good via AA Shopping. Not all partner sites track properly and I ended up missing out on even more loyalty points as some of my purchases did not track leading me to open several tickets. Points that are retroactively added to your account are coded as bonus points and you do not earn loyalty points.
What’s Next?
Since I already qualified for gold, I feel like I can be more ambitious with my goals. Elite Status is good through March 2024 so the faster I can earn top tier status such as Platinum Pro, the sooner I can take advantage of all the perks. Since elite status is good through the end of next year, I hope to fly primarily Oneworld carriers especially Alaska and American. I’m excited to start using my elite status and to actually see how many complimentary upgrades I will end up getting over the next two years.
Have you already earned American Airlines Elite status? Let me know what you think?
