American hasn’t wasted any time updating their digital assets with their new branding. Over the weekend new versions of their iPhone and iPad apps became available which not only included the new logo, but also featured support for adding a digital version of your AAdvantage card to Apple’s Passbook.

Here’s how to add your AAdvantage card to your iPhone’s Passbook.

Download and update to the latest version of American’s iOS app. Here’s a look a the new icon:

Launch the app and navigate to the “My Account” section. Select “View AAdvantage Card”.

This will generate a digital version of your AAdvantage Card. Click the “Add” button in the upper, right-hand corner.

Launch Passbook to view your AAdvantage Card.

Pretty cool!

Win One Million AAdvantage Miles

(I mentioned this late during the day on Friday, so you might have missed the news) American just launched a new sweepstakes with a grand prized of 1 million AAdvantage Miles. Share a favorite travel photo for a chance to win 1 million AAdvantage Miles!

Win 2,500 AAdvantage Miles

Don’t forget that The Frugal Travel Guys’s Monday Deal of the Day is sponsored by AAdvantage. Go here to share your favorite American or AAdvantage travel tip for chance to win 2,500 AAdvantage Miles!

Last Spring at SXSW, Phillip Easter, the Director of Mobile Apps at American, was on hand to give a preview of some of the software projects that American was working on and one of them was a native iPad app that included a trivia game that allowed passengers to play against each other (similar to a pub-quiz or live trivia).

It went live today, and to promote the launch American is offering players a chance to enter a weekly drawing for 100,000 AAdvantage Miles!

Prove You Know It All!

Show off your knowledge! Play Know It All, the exclusive new trivia game on American app for iPad. Play against people on your flight, other flights or on the ground!

Sign up now for your chance to win a weekly prize of 100,000 AAdvantage miles. Earn the top score each week on the Facebook leaderboard for an extra entry in the weekly drawing.

Here’s a look at the promo video:

There are several ways to enter:

To enter this Sweepstakes you must “Like” the American Airlines page on Facebook at www.facebook.com/americanairlines between 6:01 a.m. Central Time (“CT”) on November 19, 2012 and 4:59:59 p.m. CT on December 31, 2012

One (1) additional entry can be obtained through a) highest score for the week on the American Airlines “Know it All” iPad game or b) by sending an email to ipadpromo@aa.com

To learn more visit American’s Facebook page. Good luck!

BTW, there’s a new iPhone app too. It and the iPad app both look great!

Apple’s new Passbook is an iOS 6 app that lets you save all kinds of things like loyalty cards, movie tickets, gift cards, and boarding passes to your iPhone or iPad.   American was one of the first airlines to support this new feature.

I’ve used it a few times and it works really well, though at first it wasn’t obvious to me how to use it.

I wasted some time trying to figure out how to enter my AAdvantage number in Passbook in order to retrieve a ticket; you actually have to check-in using American’s mobile app, and from there save your boarding pass to Passbook. Thankfully, a Google search helped my solve the problem.

Anyway, American posted a very short tutorial on Youtube yesterday explaining how to save your boarding pass to Passbook.  Here’s a look at at the video.

You’ve probably been on a flight and witnessed the flight attendant flipping through a thick dot matrix printout of the passenger manifest.  That’s how they know passenger connection information, seating assignments, and elite status information.  

American is replacing the printed manifest by giving their flight attendants a Samsung Galaxy Note tablet loaded with a new app that provides access to passenger data and up–to–date flight information delivered in real-time.

From AA.com:

Get ready to enjoy greater comfort and personalization during your flight as American Airlines flight attendants begin using the Samsung Galaxy Note® as part of American’s innovative tablet program. This will put invaluable customer data at their fingertips allowing them to further enhance your travel experience.

Planned to be a first of its kind in the airline industry, the flight attendant tablet program, rolling out later this year, is just one way we’re empowering our people to help you fly better. From seat assignments and special services, to premium class food and beverage options, to loyalty program status and connecting gate information, we want to ease your travel process from boarding to deplaning.

Here’s an overview video that American published to their YouTube channel that features former AAdvantage President and current AA Chief Information Officer, Maya Leibman giving an overview of the new flight attendant app.

Former AAdvantage President and current CIO, Maya Leibman gave an interview to Lori Ranson over at the Airline Passenger Experience Association blog, and talked about some of the new features that American has been testing with the mobile app.

One of the interesting items was this:

American has also conducted trials with mobile applications that would allow customers to pre-purchase items on the carrier’s buy-on-board menu. The trials were targeted to specific areas in the US. Leibman explains the testing entailed alerting the passengers to the items available for purchase on a upcoming flight.

There’s that great observation in Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

…Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question How can we eat? the second by the question Why do we eat? and the third by the question Where shall we have lunch?

Borrowing on that idea, I’d say that the three phases of civilized travel are Am I Going to Eat, What will I Eat, and What Do I Want To Order For Lunch From My iPhone.

If you find yourself with a tight connection to a long flight, it’s nice to know that when you get to the plane that there will be a Brisket, Lettuce, and Tomato sandwich with your name it.

Go here to read the rest of the interview.

Photo: American Airlines iPhone App
Credit: Cote on Flickr

Since last August, American has offered passengers on their trans-continental 767-200 flights, wirelessly streamed, on-demand entertainment to their laptops. American uses an onboard server to deliver the video, and travelers are able to “rent” TV programs and movies for $.99 to $3.99 (sort of like Netflix).

Here’s a video demo:

Up till now, iOS and Android devices weren’t compatible with the video format.  I’m not sure when that changed, but today I noticed American has expanded their on-demand service and now support iPad and Android tablets.

Stay entertained in the air with entertainment on demand. Purchase wirelessly streamed movies and TV shows from an inflight library to your Wi-Fi-enabled laptop during flight, and now to your iPad, Galaxy Tab, Motorola Xoom or any tablet that runs iOS 4 or 5 or Android OS 3.2.

To promote it, they’re giving you free Gogo wifi when you rent a movie:

To celebrate the launch of entertainment on demand availability on tablets, we’re giving away complimentary Wi-Fi. Simply purchase a movie in flight now through June 3 and you’ll receive a complimentary Inflight Wi-Fi pass for use on your next flight.

The best news is that it won’t just be 767-200 with this technology:

Entertainment on demand is available onboard all American Airlines flights on 767-200 planes…as well as select MD80 planes and coming soon to 737-800 planes.

We are working to install entertainment on demand service across our entire Inflight Wi-Fi equipped domestic fleet by the end of the year.

If want to know if on-demand entertainment is available on your next flight, the AA Wifi Widget now displays availability.

Visit this page at AA.com for complete details.

Speaking of on-demand entertainment….

A month or two ago, I was traveling from JFK to San Francisco and took a video of the menu from the Samsung Galaxy Tab entertainment system that’s offered to First Class and Business Class passengers. 

It’s hardly a documentary, but if you’re curious….

Have a great weekend!

I have a confession, it may be a little obsessive, but every morning I check my AAdvantage account balance and take a look at my AA reservations.

This usually happens on my iPhone while I’m standing in line at Starbuck’s, and this morning when I went to the AA.com mobile site while waiting on my Americano, I noticed that it had been completely redesigned.

Here’s a look.

The new home page.  Cleaner and with tabs to help you navigate with fewer clicks.

The new reservation page is much improved. On the old site the “Select” and “Cancel” links were small and too close together, making it easy to accidentally select the wrong action.   The new site has buttons which make it much easier to select an option without making a mistake. 

The new seat map.  The old site didn’t display every row in one page, you had to navigate through two or three pages to see all the seats.  This new site displays the whole seating map on a single page.

I like the new website.  Take a look for yourself at mobile.aa.com and share you thoughts in the comments section.  

American Airlines 2012 SXSW event
Corazon at Castle Hill in Austin, TX

Twenty thousand people have landed in Austin for five days of workshops, panel discussions, and parties at the SXSW Interactive festival. This annual event is a big showcase of new products, apps, and services from small startups you haven’t heard of (yet) and large companies you know very well, like Highlight, Google, Facebook, Pintrest, Twitter, HootSuite, GM, Pepsi, Samsung.

American Airlines is here too, and they hosted an event Sunday evening to talk about their expanding social media presence, and some of the things they’re doing with mobile technology. They were kind enough to extend me an invite, so I stopped by to visit.

For me, it was a great opportunity to meet the American Airlines social team, and to be able to put a face with an avatar, email address, or Twitter handle. I was also able to meet Phil Easter, the Director of Mobile Apps and get a sneak preview of some of the software that his group has been busy developing.

One of the highlights of the evening was getting to meet two of AA’s most active Facebook fans: Will F. and Duane. C. Will is in town for the conference and Duane flew in from Chicago just to attend the American event, I was really glad to have met them.

Anyway, I got the impression that both the Mobile App team and the Social Media team function like small startups: they’ve had to create roles and functions where previously none existed, they’re passionate about what they’re doing, and they’re doing some cool stuff.

Mobile Apps

Phil Easter leads American’s mobile strategy and development. He was on hand to demonstrate a new version of the American Airlines iPad App. It’s been completely redone to take advantage of of the iPad’s larger screen. The main menu is now more of a dashboard. You’ll be able to view important info without having to move through several menus, most of your information will be available just by scrolling. The graphic elements of the user interface have also been completely redesigned. It has a more polished, data driven interface, and looks less like the website and more like an iPad App.

Another improvement…I promised not to say much about it, but Sudoku fans will be really happy with version 2.0. They’re doing something really clever with gameplay. The new app will be out later this year.

Some other AA mobile app news: American will be coming out with a new game app later this year. I promised not to say more until they open it up for beta testing, but it has a social gaming element and you’ll be able to earn badges and AAdvantage Miles.

It’s not like anything I’ve seen before. It’s not just a “private label” version of an existing mobile game, it’s completely original, and I’m not sure another app development company could pull if off without having their own airline and frequent flyer program.

Raffle to give away a Samsung Galaxy TAB

Social Media Strategy

American has been busy the last year and half building a team around some of the new social media communication services. Three years ago they we just blasting marketing messages on Facebook and Twitter and they weren’t having a lot of success with that strategy. Then two years ago they decided to do things differently.

Since then, they’ve crafted a strategy that uses these channels to talk to customers, resolve customer service issues, trace lost luggage, provide information about weather related delays, and still keep their customers up to date on mileage offers and fare sales. They started out with three people and now they’re up to eleven and still expanding.

Something that I thought was really interesting: they spend a lot of time reading and following milepoint and FlyerTalk. I know that they post in both forums from time to time. but I wasn’t sure how closely they monitored the discussions.

It turns out that they were familiar with all the threads and topics, they knew the forum usernames of the most active participants, and they were impressed with the quantity and quality of information available in the forums.

Reader Giveaway

Congratulations to Jay, the winner of Friday’s Reader Giveaway! Friday I asked readers to look at the Q2 Citi reduced mileage award chart and name the city they would most like to visit.

Three readers suggested my favorite destination, Montreal. Jay had a great suggestion too, with Lexington, KY, home of Valhalla Golf Club, site of the 2008 Ryder Cup.

Win an American Airlines USB Card and Free Code for Gogo Wifi

The AA social media team was nice enough to give me five USB cards with free codes for Gogo Inflight Wifi, so each day this week I’ll be giving one away.

To celebrate SXSW, all you have to do to enter is share the name of your favorite mobile travel app in the comments section. If you don’t have a favorite, you can share that fact instead.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll have a random drawing to pick a winner, and will announce the results Tuesday’s post. One entry per person. The deadline to enter is tonight, March 12, at 11:59PM Pacific.

Good luck!

If you’re already a member of the AAdvantage Dining program, keep an eye on your inbox for a targeted offer.  The bonus varies by recipient, but here’s a look at the offer that I received:

Register now for the Sweeten the Deal Bonus.  Spend $125 dining at program restaurants through December 31, 2011 and complete your dining reviews within 30 days of each visit to earn 3 AAdvantage bonus miles on top of the AAdvantage miles you already earn for dining.  That’s an additional 375 AAdvantage bonus miles!

Here’s how to earn your extra 3 AAdvantage bonus miles per dollar:

1 Register for the Sweeten the Deal Bonus
2 Spend $125 dining at program restaurants through 12/31/11
3 Complete your reviews within 30 days of dining

Others have reported receiving a similar offer but with spending and bonus levels ranging from $75 for 225 miles up to $200 for 600 miles.

Here’s the landing page for the offer I received (including terms and conditions).

Speaking of keeping an eye on your inbox, it may be that I should pay a little more attention to the AAdvantage Dining emails I receive, but something I discovered last night came a surprise to me: there is a mobile app that supports AAdvantage Dining

Rewards Network, the people that offer dining rewards for many loyalty programs (including AAdvantage) have had a mobile app for some time.  But until recently, their RN Dining app didn’t support the AAdvantage Dining program.  That’s changed very recently, and now tthe app will help you earn miles with your meals.

 Here’s the description of the iPhone app:

SEARCH: Choose the dining program you belong to (including AAdvantage), then search by current location, by popular cities or by ZIP code/city and state.
FIND: Get search results alphabetically or by distance.
DIG IN: Get deeper details like menus, photos and the phone number to call for reservations.
NAVIGATE: Click “Map” to see where to find your selected restaurant, bar or club.

RN Dining isn’t just for iPhone, it’s also compatible with Android and Blackberry devices.   Go here to learn more and to get the RN Dining app on your phone.  

Unless scientists capture the Loch Ness Monster or discover an asteroid headed towards earth, the big story this week is going to be the Apple’s Tuesday press conference to unveil the iPhone 5.  Way over on the other end of the news coverage spectrum is a small upgrade of the American Airlines website that happened over the weekend.

American has been rolling out updates of AA.com all year.  Some of them have been cosmetic improvements to the look and design of the website, while others have been backend upgrades to allow them to add new service products such as Preferred Seats and paid PriorityAAccess.  I guess the AA.com web team must have spent part of Friday night working, because Saturday when I went to the site to purchase a ticket for a reservation I had made on Friday, I noticed the reservation page had been redesigned.

The most prominent new feature of the reservation page is the larger typeface.

Here’s a look at the the details section of the reservation page:

Here’s a screen capture of the notification profile section:

Here’s a screen capture of the upgrade request section:

The thing that you don’t notice immediately though, is the flexibility of the new design.  I took a look at the source code behind the new page and the AA.com web team designed it so that it looks good on multiple screen sizes and devices. It scales nicely on the desktop as well as iPads and tablets sized screens.  Here’s how it looks on the iPad.

It’s funny how deeply attached people can be to a design once they become familiar with it, and I’m no different.   At first I wasn’t sure if I liked the larger text.   But after viewing the change a few times, I came to realize that it’s much easier for my aging eyes me to see.   Now I don’t need my glasses to read it anymore; it’s like 1999 all over again!

Speaking of 1999, just to show you how far the site has come, here’s a look at the home page via the Wayback Machine:

So what do you think? Do you like the new look?