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Citi Adds 48-month Restriction to All American Airlines Credit Cards

  • Jason Stauffer

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    (Photo courtesy of American Airlines)

    Citi is an MMS advertising partner.

    Last month some Citi American Airlines credit card application pages were showing updated restrictions. In the past, you had to wait 24 months from when you opened or closed a Citi American Airlines card before you were eligible to earn the bonus again. Now Citi has introduced a 48-month waiting period with slightly different language.

    Updated Citi American Airlines Credit Card Restrictions

    This is what the updated restrictions look like for the Citi®/AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard®:

    American Airlines AAdvantage® bonus miles are not available if you have received a new account bonus for a Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard account in the past 48 months.

    And similar language now also applies to the following cards:

    Now you’ll have to wait longer, but the wait (in some cases) won’t be as bad as it looks. The silver lining is that the 48-month restriction is now applied to each card individually, instead of the entire brand of cards. So if you’ve earned a bonus with the Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard®, it won’t limit you from earning a bonus with Citi American Airlines Platinum card.

    The 48-month waiting period starts when you earn your welcome bonus, which typically is within three months of opening your card. Previously, the 24-month waiting period began when you opened or closed a card. So if you kept a card open for 24 months and closed it, you would have had to wait 48 months before being eligible for that card’s bonus again.

    As of now, the 48-month waiting period hasn’t been extended to other Citi credit cards like the Citi Premier® Card or Citi Prestige® Card. But the writing is on the wall and it looks like this is the direction Citi is heading. So if you’ve been considering applying for either of those cards, you might want to move them up your list.

    Also, the Citi Premier has an intro bonus of 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 in purchases within the first 3 months of account opening. To learn more about the card, read our full Citi Premier review. And don’t forget that this fall Citi is cutting a ton of travel perks from their cards, which means you’ll need to get your coverage from a different credit card with travel insurance.

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

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    Featured image courtesy of American Airlines.

    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! :)