Last Chance To Save 10,000 Miles On Your American Airlines Redemptions

April 20, 2019 By Jason Stauffer

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INSIDER SECRET: One perk for certain American Airlines credit cards that isn’t going away is the American Airlines reduced Mileage Awards, which can save you up to 7,500 miles on award flights to 100+ airports.

Currently, both the Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard® and the Barclays AAdvantage^® Aviator^® Red World Elite Mastercard come with a 10% rebate for mileage redemptions. This unique benefit gets you up to 10,000 American Airlines miles back per year.

Unfortunately, this perk will no longer be around as of May 1, 2019. So you’ve only got less than 2 weeks left to use it or lose it. The good news is that even if you don’t have a card with the rebate, you’ve still got time to apply and use the perk before it goes away.

And now is a great time to apply for these cards because both of them currently have limited-time increased 60,000-mile intro bonuses which you can earn after meeting the minimum spending requirements.

The information for the Citi AAdvantage Platinum and Barclays Aviator Red card has been collected independently by Million Mile Secrets. The card details on this page have not been reviewed or provided by the card issuer.

If you’ve got American Airlines redemptions to make, you’ve only got a couple of weeks to potentially get 10% of your miles back

American Airlines Credit Cards Losing Their 10% Mileage Rebate

If you don’t currently have a card with the 10% mileage rebate perk you still have time to apply and take advantage of it. This is great if you can earn the full rebate before it goes away because you’re saving 10,000 American Airlines miles.

Currently, the Citi American Airlines Platinum Select credit card has a limited-time intro bonus of 60,000 American Airlines miles after spending $3,000 on purchases within the first 3 months of account opening. And the card’s $99 annual fee is waived for the first 12 months.

My wife was just approved for the Barclays American Airlines Aviator card. This card also currently has a 60,000 American Airlines mile bonus which you can earn after making your first purchase in the first 90 days and paying the card’s $95 annual fee.

The Barclays American Airlines card has a smaller spending requirement, but you’ll have to pay the annual fee and I’ve found Barclays cards can be harder to get approved for if you’ve opened a lot of cards in the past year or 2. Check out this post for Barclays approval tips before you apply.

In my personal experience, the Citi American Airlines Platinum card is easier to get approved for. However, if you’ve had any Citi American Airlines card opened or closed in the past 24 months you won’t be eligible for the card’s bonus. Thankfully, this doesn’t apply to the American Airlines AAdvantage MileUp℠ Card or the CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Mastercard®.

The information for the CitiBusiness AAdvantage Platinum card has been collected independently by Million Mile Secrets. The card details on this page have not been reviewed or provided by the card issuer.

One reason I wanted my wife to apply for one of these cards right now is so we could take full advantage of the rebate.

The 10% rebate is an instant discount, but you’ll need enough miles in your account to book the award. Once you’re approved for a card with it will likely take a couple of days for the rebate to work properly on your account. So keep that in mind.

In the above screenshot we redeemed 6,500 miles for an Economy Web Specials award a day after being approved for the card and the rebate wasn’t applied. But 4 days after that we got the full 10,000 miles back on an Etihad First Class redemption.

The rebate is automatic because the credit card is linked to your American Airlines account. Just be sure to correctly enter your American Airlines account number on the card application. Also, if you have more than 1 card with the 10% rebate, they won’t stack. So you can’t get 20,000 miles back per year.

If you need some help figuring out the best ways to use your American Airlines miles, check out these guides:

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Jason Stauffer

Writer

Jason Stauffer was a writer for Million Mile Secrets where he covered points, miles, credit cards, airlines, hotels and general travel. His work has appeared in The Points Guy and NextAdvisor.