As I wrap up another incredible year of flying I always enjoy looking back at where I’ve been in the past 12 months. Thankfully, American Airlines makes looking back easy by sending customers a year-end email. For the past two years American Airlines has sent AAdvantage members a Year In Review email which summarizes their…
To get back home from a recent trip to London I decided to book an extremely inexpensive economy class fare from London to Chicago on American Airlines. The flight I booked was on American’s 787 in economy class. Believe or not until then I had never flown a long-haul flight on the Dreamliner in economy…
Well, once again I’ve done it. For the second year in a row I’ve officially qualified for American Airlines AAdvantage Executive Platinum elite status. Although the qualifications this year were the same as last year I must say that this year was much more difficult. Last year I had the luxury of flying 60,000 miles…
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are two of my favorite days of the year. I say that seriously, but I’m not after consumer goods on those days. Instead I love Black Friday and Cyber Monday because airlines typically have decent sales too. Airlines typically have especially good sales on premium cabin airfare. In years past…
For those of you who have read the blog before you may already know that I have a troubled relationship with the AAdvantage Aviator lineup of credit cards from Barclays US. Late last year I decided to open the AAdvantage Aviator Red card in order to earn $3,000 EQD this year through credit card spend.…
One of the main reasons I started flying with American Airlines years ago was the AAdvantage program. At the time in order to qualify for elite status all I needed to do was fly a certain number of miles or segments. It didn’t matter how much money I spent with the airline, if I flew…
As any frequent flyer knows, one of the best benefits of any airline elite status is flexibility. Once you earn even the lowest tier of elite status with an airline it becomes immensely easier to change flights in the event of a schedule change. When I flew every other week for work it was this…
By far one of the things that most frustrates me about the AAdvantage program is spending miles. American for whatever reason makes it incredibly difficult to search for award space on most partner airlines. I suspect this is because they want their members redeeming American miles for flights on American. After all, by doing this…
Wow, that’s really all I can say about the latest news from Barclaycard and American Airlines. Earlier this week, American Airlines and Barclaycard announced to total gutting of benefits offered by their co-branded Aviator credit cards. I’ve written extensively about the Aviator lineup of cards and until now have had mixed feelings about the cards.…
Well, it’s hard to believe but the end of the year is just a few weeks away. With that most of us have a pretty good idea of where we will land in terms of airline elite status. However, many of us will realize that we’re “right there” and will miss the next tier or…
