One of the things I dislike most about the American AAdvatnage program is that you can’t earn Elite Qualifying Miles or Elite Qualifying Dollars on award tickets. When you’re redeeming miles you won’t earn any form of mileage accrual for the flight. This is especially disappointing when redeeming miles for long-haul flights.
Because I don’t earn AAdvantage elite status accrual when redeeming miles I generally avoid booking many flights with miles. Instead, I much prefer to use miles to upgrade my paid economy class tickets. While I realize this isn’t a great use of AAdvantage miles, that’s how I mostly prefer to use my AAdvantage miles.
Earning AAdvantage Elite Status Accrual On An Award Flight
While you generally can’t earn miles on an award flight, there is potentially a loophole. Earlier this year I used British Airways miles to pay for a short-haul American Airlines flight and ended up earning miles for the flight. This isn’t common, but it’s worth noting that it does happen. However, a specific series of events transpired that led to me earning miles on my award flight.
Booking An American Airlines Flight With British Airways Avios
One of the better uses of British Airways Avios (miles) is booking short-haul American Airlines flights. Sometimes flights from Chicago to St. Louis can cost well over $300 for a one way flight so I’ll often just use British Airways Avios. In that example, the flight costs just 7,500 Avios and $5.60. It’s an incredible deal when tickets are so unreasonably priced. So, a few months back, I booked a trip to St. Louis with Avios.
Changing My Frequent Flyer Number On My Ticket
When booking British Airways award flights your British Airways frequent flyer account is automatically tied to your reservation. I don’t have elite status with British Airways so after booking my flight I needed to change the frequent flyer account to my AAdvantage number. By making this change I could use my Executive Platinum elite status benefits which include being upgraded, even on award flights.
American doesn’t make it easy to change your frequent flyer number on ticketed reservations, but there is an easy trick. Simply visit the Finnair website, visit the manage my booking page, and you can change your frequent flyer number on any OneWorld booking.
Shortly after changing my frequent flyer number to my AAdvantage number I was upgrade to domestic first class on the flight.
Standby On An Earlier Flight
When flying to St. Louis I usually try to book the last flight of the day. I book this flight because it gives me the flexibility to take an earlier flight as needed.
On the day I needed to travel I ended up being able to take a much earlier flight than the one I was scheduled to take. I arrived to the gate of the earlier flight just moments after boarding began. At the gate I requested to standby and my standby request cleared instantly.
Earning Miles On An Award Flight
About a day after taking the earlier flight I noticed that the flight posted to my AAdvantage account. I earned redeemable miles, EQM, and EQD for the flight. Although I wasn’t supposed to earn miles on the flight it appears as though through the various changes I made to the flight I ended up flying with a fare code that earned miles.
Final Thoughts
I wanted to share this experience because I thought it was odd that I earned AAdvantage miles on an award flight. My guess is that this was one of those once in a thousand type situations that led to me earning miles. I’d be willing to bet if I did this exact same thing a few times over that I wouldn’t earn miles again. However, it is nice knowing that is is somewhat possible to earn miles on an award ticket.
