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I Paid $106 for $1,400 in American Airlines Business Class Seats – Here’s How I Flew 2 People in Business Class With One Credit Card Bonus!

  • Million Mile Secrets

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    Citi is an MMS advertising partner.

    For many of us racking up points & miles, it is all about saving our dollars!  Throughout my lifetime, I’ve earned millions of points and miles with credit cards, and have enjoyed saving thousands of dollars.

    Recently, I accomplished a new goal by booking my very first Business Class flight for my wife and me.  And I was able to make it happen with the American Airlines miles I earned with one credit card bonus!

    If you want to make the most of easy to earn American Airlines miles, check out our complete guide to American Airlines miles for all the tips and tricks you need.

    I’m Can’t Wait to Soak Up the Sun in Puerto Rico!

    Here’s how simple it was!

    One American Airlines Credit Card Bonus Can Get the Job Done!

    Many sign-up bonuses can be harder to earn because they have large minimum spending requirements.  But earning the bonus for the Barclays AAdvantage® Aviator® Red World Elite Mastercard® is a piece of cake!  You can sign up for the card and receive 50,000 American Airlines miles after you make a single purchase within the first 90 days of account opening and pay the annual fee!  All I did to earn the bonus was reload my Amazon account with a $1 gift card.

    The card has a $95 annual fee, but this is still a easy slam dunk.  And sometimes the offer is even higher than the current public one.  When I applied I was able to earn a bonus of 60,000 American Airlines miles.

    American Airlines miles are easy to earn because both Citi and Barclays issue American Airlines credit cards!  You can also earn American Airlines miles with these cards:

    The information for the Citi AAdvantage Platinum and 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.

    Our Flights

    My wife and I have been very interested in traveling to Puerto Rico for some time, and we decided to make the trip for January 2019.  We booked our flight to San Juan on Delta Airlines (my personal favorite), and have a 3 hour layover in Atlanta.  Just enough time to enjoy a Delta lounge thanks to The Platinum Card® from American Express!  For this flight, we paid cash.

    On the way back, we are using 50,000 American Airlines miles (25,000 miles each) to fly from San Juan to Philadelphia in Business Class on a Boeing 767-300, and then Philadelphia to Salt Lake City in First Class on an Airbus A321.  To fly in coach for this flight would have been 25,000 miles for both of us, but the value for this was not very good, so I decided to splurge.

    The Value

    This is the best part!  While I was super excited to book this, the value we’re getting for our miles makes me the happiest.  For my wife and me to fly back in these exact seats, it would have cost us ~$1,400!  Instead, I used 50,000 American Airlines miles and paid only ~$11 in taxes.

    If you include the $95 annual fee, we paid ~$106 out of pocket for $1,400 in airfare!  Not a bad deal at all.  And typically, 50,000 American Airlines miles are worth ~$700, so this is a huge success in stretching miles in addition to saving cash!

    Bottom Line

    Miles & points have allowed my wife and me to travel for much less than retail price.  If you aren’t a heavy spender and don’t fly very often, you can still earn miles and points to accomplish your travel goals!

    And with miles & points, options like Business & First Class seats become affordable for just about anyone!

    Ready to learn the secrets to flying in luxury for a fraction of the cost of the cheap seats?  Then subscribe to our newsletter to get them delivered daily!

    Editorial Note: We're the Million Mile Secrets team. And we're proud of our content, opinions and analysis, and of our reader's comments. These haven’t been reviewed, approved or endorsed by any of the airlines, hotels, or credit card issuers which we often write about. And that’s just how we like it! :)