Through 12PM CDT on Thursday, April 5, American is offering both a 30% bonus AND 15% discount on the purchase of miles. For those of us not good at math, that translates to…. well, a hot mess.

Through this promotion the cost to purchase 40,000 miles is $935 plus the processing fee and taxes, for a grand total of $1,035.13.

Those 40,000 miles don’t include the 30% mileage bonus (12,000 bonus miles), which will post 6-8 weeks after the end of the promotion (though in practice it may be sooner). That nets you a total of 52,000 American miles for $1,035.13, which is ~1.99 cents per mile.

That’s about as cheap as I’ve ever seen them sell miles. Is it worth topping off an account at this rate? Absolutely, if it will get you towards a redemption threshold. Is it worth buying miles without a specific use in mind? I’d say probably not, since they’re always subject to being devalued.

Two cents is slightly higher than I value American miles, though not much…

American has just announced they’ll be adding several new benefits to their Citi Platinum Select AAdvantage credit cards, which apparently kick in today. The benefits are as follows:

First checked bag free

For benefit to apply, at the time of booking, Citi® / AAdvantage® account must have been open at least 7 days and reservation must include the primary cardmember’s American Airlines AAdvantage® number. This benefit is valid for travel booked and ticketed on or after April 2, 2012. If your credit card account is closed for any reason, this benefit will be cancelled. Eligible Citi® / AAdvantage® cardmembers may check one bag free of charge when traveling on American Airlines, American Eagle or the AmericanConnection® carrier to select domestic destinations. Up to four customers traveling with the eligible primary credit cardmember will also get their first checked bag free of charge if they are listed in the same reservation. Waiver does not apply to overweight or oversized bags. This benefit cannot be combined with any existing AAdvantage® elite program benefits, including any waiver of baggage charges. Please see AA.com for baggage weight and size restrictions. Additional terms, conditions and restrictions may apply. Applicable terms and conditions are subject to change without notice.

Based on the way I interpret it, you don’t actually have to use the credit card to make the purchase, but the same primary AAdvantage number just needs to be linked to the reservation and the credit card. Also, it applies to up to four people traveling on the same reservation, which is great.

Priority Boarding

For benefit to apply, at the time of booking, Citi® / AAdvantage® account must have been open at least 7 days and reservation must include the primary cardmember’s American Airlines AAdvantage® number. If your credit card account is closed for any reason, these benefits will be cancelled. This benefit is valid for travel booked and ticketed on or after April 2, 2012. Eligible Citi® / AAdvantage® cardmembers will have priority boarding privileges when traveling on American Airlines, American Eagle or the AmericanConnection® carrier operated and marketed flights. Priority boarding group will only be printed on the boarding pass of the eligible Citi® / AAdvantage® primary credit cardmember. Up to four customers traveling with and listed in the same reservation as the Citi® / AAdvantage® primary credit cardmember are eligible for priority boarding. These benefits will not be available for travel on codeshare flights booked with an AA flight number but operated by another airline. Applicable terms and conditions are subject to change without notice.

The most interesting thing here is that up to four people traveling on the same reservation can get priority boarding as well. In the past priority boarding for companions was more or less an unpublished benefit, though I suspect this means that elite members can also have four others board with them at the same time. At least that would seem logical…

$100 American Airlines Flight Discount

Earn a $100 American Airlines Flight Discount when you spend $30,000 or more in purchases on your
Citi® / AAdvantage® credit card during your cardmembership year (each 12 month period prior to your anniversary date) and your account remains open for at least 45 days after your anniversary. The Flight Discount expires one year from date of issue. The Flight Discount is redeemable toward the initial electronic ticket purchase of air travel wholly on flights operated by American Airlines, American Eagle or the AmericanConnection® carrier for itineraries sold and originating in the U.S., Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands. The Flight Discount is also redeemable for air travel on any oneworld® partner or American Airlines codeshare flight. The Flight Discount is redeemable online at www.aa.com. The Flight Discount is redeemable only toward the purchase of the base air fare and directly associated taxes, fees and charges that are collected as part of the fare calculation for travel on American Airlines, American Eagle or the AmericanConnection® carrier. The Flight Discount may not be used for flight products and/or services that are sold separately or non-flight products and/or services sold by American Airlines. If the ticket price is greater than the value of the Flight Discount, the difference must be paid only with a credit, debit or charge card, or with American Airlines Gift Cards. If travel booked with the Flight Discount is cancelled or changed by the cardmember, the Flight Discount will be forfeited and the cardmember will be responsible for any applicable fare difference and the applicable change fee. The Flight Discount will not be replaced for any reason. The Flight Discount is non-refundable, may not be sold and has no cash redemption value. If the $30,000 purchase requirement was met during your cardmembership year and your account remains open for at least 45 days after your anniversary, please allow 8-12 weeks for the Flight Discount delivery.

Okay, that’s nice if you spend $30,000 on the card anyway, though that would raise the question as to why the hell you’re spending $30,000 on this card in a year when there’s a better card for literally every spend category (Premier Rewards Gold card for airfare/gas/groceries and Chase Sapphire Preferred card for dining and travel, just to name a couple).

Earn 10% Back on Your Redeemed American Airlines AAdvantage® Miles

For benefit to apply, your Citi® / AAdvantage® account must be open and active at the time of redemption. The American Airlines AAdvantage® bonus miles you earn through this benefit will be based on 10% of the total AAdvantage® miles you redeem each month during the calendar year. The maximum number of AAdvantage® bonus miles you can earn annually from this benefit is 10,000 AAdvantage® bonus miles per calendar year, regardless of how many AAdvantage® miles you redeem in that calendar year. This benefit only applies to AAdvantage® miles redeemed from the primary cardmember’s AAdvantage® account. Discover all the ways to redeem AAdvantage® miles at www.aa.com/redeem. Please allow 6-8 weeks after your redemption for the American Airlines AAdvantage® bonus miles to post to the primary cardmember’s AAdvantage® account.

Okay, now this is awesome. The annual fee on the card is $95, and this benefit means I’ll save 10,000 miles per year, which is worth way more to me than $95. So this alone makes the card worth keeping for me.

25% savings on in-flight purchases

Citi® / AAdvantage cardmembers will receive a 25% savings on in-flight purchases of food, beverages, and headsets on flights operated by American Airlines when purchased with their Citi® / AAdvantage® card. Savings do not apply to any other in-flight purchases, such as wireless internet access, SkyMallTM and DutyFree. Offer is available on eligible flights as long as supplies last. Savings will appear as a statement credit 6–8 weeks after the transaction is posted to the cardmember’s credit card account. Additional terms, conditions and restrictions may apply. Applicable terms and conditions are subject to change without notice.

I can’t say I’ve ever purchased anything aboard an American flight, though it’s a cool benefit nonetheless. As an Executive Platinum member I get a complimentary snack and drink when I’m stuck in coach, so that more or less takes care of me.

Anyway, it’s nice to see the AAdvantage Citi cards doing some catching up. I’ve probably had more Citi AAdvantage cards than any other type of card thanks to the fact that they consistently offer huge sign-up bonuses of 50,000-75,000 miles. But I couldn’t bring myself to spend a cent on them beyond the minimum required for the bonus, since they offered virtually no benefits.

I still can’t bring myself to spend a cent on them, though at least I’ll gladly pay the annual fee to save 10,000 miles. And in fairness I do think the other benefits will make this a much more lucrative card for the average consumer.

I’ve received several emails over the past few weeks regarding my laptop incident on American Airlines. As some of you may recall, I was flying from Dallas to Miami and the flight attendant spilled orange juice on my laptop. I have a MacBook Air which features a solid state drive, and unfortunately if liquids reach the solid state drive the computer is more or less dead.

I was very calm about the situation and the flight attendant was incredibly apologetic, and even commented that she felt even worse that it happened to someone that was as understanding as me about the situation.

I asked her to request that somebody meet the flight to follow up regarding the issue. A lot of people gave me a hard time over this, saying it was a “DYKWIA” move (which wasn’t the intent), but frankly I was just doing what I’ve observed from previous experiences. While I’ve never had such an issue happen to me, I’ve observed similar issues happen to others, from spilling wine on an expensive t-shirt to Bose headphones being damaged by a flight attendant, and in each instance a supervisor automatically met the flight.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years it’s that you can’t trust an airline’s word unless you have it in writing, so that was my goal by having someone in a position of authority meet the flight. I knew otherwise I’d more or less be pushed around and on my own. I also knew if the incident wasn’t documented almost immediately the chances of getting it resolved would decrease exponentially. I don’t think an email to customer relations a day after the incident would have gotten me anything but a form apology.

With that in mind, here’s what happened after making it back home. American’s Twitter team put me in touch with their risk management department, who contacted me within two days regarding my issue. They asked me to ship in my old laptop and they would reimburse me for a replacement. I was somewhat concerned about sending it in since I have lots of data on my laptop that I didn’t want to compromise, and at least in theory I assume someone could recover it.

I went to the Genius Bar at the Apple Store and asked what they would recommend, and they offered to physically remove the solid state drive, so that I could send in the laptop without it. I emailed the person at American to ask if they’d be alright with that, and after a couple of days they responded that they were fine with that. So I went back to the Genius Bar to have it removed, and the sent in the laptop with the power cord and manual.

They’ve promised me that the check is being processed (both for the laptop and my cost incurred shipping it to them, which I thought was generous), and they tell me that it will likely take at least 30 days till they get the check (since they’re in Chapter 11), and then they’ll send it to me.

So assuming that the check does eventually arrive, color me impressed.

The logical question many of you are probably asking is whether or not I got that resolution because I’m a blogger or not. I don’t know. I’m sure the speed with which I got a resolution has something to do with that, though I’d hope that they would solve this in a similar manner for everyone else as well. Based on what I’ve heard, even those that aren’t bloggers or that don’t have a lot of followers on Twitter still get their issues solved pretty quickly with airlines and hotels when using social media.

What did I learn from this experience?

• ALWAYS close or move your laptop when you’re being served on an airplane.
• Get documentation of the incident as soon as you land. Flight attendants can file a report on any airport computer, so have them do that as soon as you land, and make sure you get the case number, as well as their name and/or employee ID.
• I’ll stick to it, no matter what others say: request a supervisor immediately, because these cases are so rare that most employees really don’t know how to handle them. I was pushed around from the gate to the Admirals Club to baggage claim to customer relations at the beginning, and it wasn’t until I was put in touch with someone higher up that I got any sort of a resolution.

So there you have it, that’s my update for those of you that were wondering.

To celebrate Air Berlin’s new membership in the OneWorld alliance, American and British Airways are both offering double miles for travel on Air Berlin through May 15, 2012.

American’s promotion is valid for flights operated and marketed by Air Berlin, as well as American codeshare flights operated by Air Berlin. The following fare classes are eligible for mileage accrual on Air Berlin through this promotion: J, C, D, I, Y, B, H, K, M, L, V or N. Registration is required using code ABDBL. AAdvantage mileage accrual for travel on Air Berlin is as follows:

British Airways’ promotion doesn’t require registration, and is also valid for all Air Berlin flights. Their mileage accrual chart for travel on Air Berlin is as follows:

While Air Berlin has been a partner with American and British Airways for a while now, what I’m most excited about is being able to include Air Berlin flights on American’s distance based OneWorld awards, which are among the best values in the industry. While Air Berlin is more or less a low cost carrier, I’m still excited to have a bigger German presence in the OneWorld alliance, given that American has a single daily flight to Germany (between Dallas and Frankfurt).

Since last October American has been running a double miles promotion (both redeemable and elite qualifying) for roundtrip travel between Chicago/Dallas and Los Angeles/San Francisco. I suspect they’re doing this mainly to try and “stick it” to Virgin America since they entered those markets. Only those with AAdvantage accounts with addresses registered in California, Illinois, and Texas are eligible for the promotion.

The promotion was set to expire on March 31, 2012, though it seems like American has decided to extend the promotion through June 30, 2012. Not only that, but they’ve also added double miles for nonstop travel between Chicago and Orange County.

These segments can be part of a larger itinerary, though the key is that you’re flying those routes nonstop and roundtrip. Anyway, registration is required if you haven’t done so already.

This promotion is a great way to earn status with American quickly, assuming you have an address registered in one of those three states. While American isn’t running a systemwide double elite qualifying miles promotion as they were earlier in the year, here’s a write up of the benefits of mileage running for status.

(Tip of the hat to Mommy Points)

Check out this Dallas Observer article about an American flight this morning from Dallas to Chicago, where one of the flight attendants apparently lost it. She supposedly repeatedly announced on the PA that she’s not responsible if the plane crashes, and after a bit of back-and-forth between her and the other flight attendants, she was eventually restrained by passengers. Two flights attendants were injured.

Check out the story, including the video at the bottom of the second page where you can hear her screaming. I suspect she was off her meds. Maybe it was Helen?

She makes Steven Slater look tame…

American has just announced the details of their 2012 Elite Rewards program. Through Elite Rewards, elite members can earn bonuses for earning more elite qualifying points thank required for reaching their status level. Basically it incentives you to continue flying American even if you’re already requalified for your status level.

The first (good) thing worth noting is that they’re communicating this early this year, since the program was only announced in August of last year.

The bonuses this year are as follows:

The bonus you qualify for is based on your status and elite qualifying points balance as of December 31, 2012. These are some pretty big bonuses, especially at the Executive Platinum level, where you’re looking at up to 70,000 bonus AAdvantage miles or up to four additional systemwide upgrades.

The thing to keep in mind, however, is that as of last year this promotion is based on elite qualifying points and not elite qualifying miles. With American you earn one elite qualifying mile per mile flown, while you earn anywhere from 0.5-1.5 elite qualifying points per mile flown. Discounted coach only earns you 0.5 points per mile, while paid first class earns you 1.5 points per mile. This means that these thresholds are actually really high if you’re not someone that usually flies on full fare or premium tickets, since 125,000 elite qualifying points really equals 250,000 flown miles in discounted coach fare classes. Still, 70,000 bonus AAdvantage miles is a pretty big carrot, so I may have to start scheming…

American has just announced that they’ll be matching United and Delta in offering an “Economy Plus” cabin fleetwide, which they’ll call Main Cabin Extra, and will feature an additional four to six extra inches of legroom.

The product will initially be rolled out on their Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, though all other existing and future mainline aircraft will offer Main Cabin Extra as well.

AAdvantage Executive Platinum and Platinum members (along with up to eight companions on the same reservation), as well as full fare customers, will receive complimentary access. Furthermore, through the end of 2013 AAdvantage Gold members will receive complimentary access. For anyone else that wishes to purchase Main Cabin Extra, the cost will range from $8 to $108 depending on the length of the flight.

As long as this doesn’t come at the expense of first class seats this is fantastic news. I’ve only flown American coach twice, so as long as my upgrade percentage doesn’t change I doubt I’ll see this cabin a whole lot. But this is a very nice enhancement, and I’m quite looking forward to seeing it rolled out.

It’s amazing how over the course of a couple of years Economy Plus went from a competitive advantage for United to a standard offering among the legacies. Years ago American actually offered “More Room Throughout Coach” whereby all of their seating was similar to Economy Plus, though after a few years they removed it since they determined passengers weren’t willing to pay a few bucks extra for more legroom across the board. This business model makes a lot more sense, whereby you have the option of paying for more legroom, while you’re not driving away business by charging a few dollars more than the competition across the board.

I’ll keep it short, since this story is still developing. I flew from Dallas to Miami this morning, and as the flight attendant was serving drinks she drenches my MacBook Air with orange juice. I mean drenches. She was pretty apologetic about it and at first I thought it was no big deal. She brought me lots of towels and I spent a few minutes drying my MacBook Air. For a short while everything looked okay, though as soon as I turned it on I noticed the keyboard didn’t work. Crap. That’s one of the downsides of the MacBook Air — I don’t think you can remove the keys, so when something like this happens you’re more or less hosed.

After a few minutes the computer also stopped turning on. I mentioned this to the flight attendant and she said she’d file a report. I requested that they have someone meet the flight regarding the issue, and she assured me she’d have the captain send a message to Miami for someone to meet the flight. A few minutes later another flight attendant came by my seat to apologize and said “to be honest this is Miami, so I really wouldn’t count on anyone actually showing up.” Yes, that has indeed been my experience with American at Miami — service is awful.

We land and sure enough there’s no one there to meet us. Not only that, but there’s no gate agent in sight. After waiting for about 15 minutes a gate agent shows up though is entirely clueless as to the situation. I explain it to her and she says to go to baggage claim to file a report. She was apathetic and clearly had no desire to help me.  Fortunately (or so I thought) a supervisor showed up to handle a different issue. As it turns out he wasn’t much help either. He said the same thing, and looked at me as if I was nuts when I suggested someone was supposed to meet the flight. Before leaving I wanted to have something in writing documenting the situation. Once the crew disembarked the flight attendant that spilled the drink on my laptop documented the incident on the computer and gave me a case number.

I went to baggage claim and they told me that wasn’t their responsibility and to go to aa.com and file a complaint with customer relations.

That seems a bit ridiculous given that we’re not talking about a complaint or minor service issue, but a seriously busted laptop.

Anyway, mark this as “developing.” I’ll keep you guys updated as to what happens. In the meantime, my apologies for being slow to respond to emails, since I’m more or less without a computer till tomorrow night.

And that leaves me exactly where I started — with a broken laptop and no resolution.

Award Wallet is my favorite website for tracking miles and points. Instead of obsessively checking all of my mileage balance individually, I can obsessively check all my balances in one place.

Back in December I wrote about American demanding that Award Wallet stop tracking AAdvantage accounts. They claimed it was due to security concerns over Award Wallet storing passwords to mileage accounts, though I suspect it had a lot more to do with American wanting customers to visit aa.com so they can hopefully extract some revenue out of them, as opposed to going to Award Wallet instead.

Award Wallet had a creative solution to this problem by creating a browser extension whereby you could store your password on your computer, and then when you check your account balances with Award Wallet it would open up your AAdvantage homepage for you, which displays your balance. It was a creative solution on the part of Award Wallet, and you would have thought all parties would be pleased with the solution — Award Wallet was no longer storing AAdvantage numbers and passwords, while consumers still had an easier way to check their account balances.

Well, I just got an email from Award Wallet, which reads as follows:

Dear Ben,

We regret to inform you that we will be discontinuing support for the AwardWallet browser extension on February 25, 2012. This means that you will no longer be able to track your American Airlines related information (balance, status, etc.) on AwardWallet.com.

 We have been forced to take this action by American Airlines’ stance toward AwardWallet. We created the browser extension in order to address American Airlines’ concern that AwardWallet was collecting customers’ mileage data. We believe the extension addressed this concern because it simply collected your mileage data and stored it locally on your computer. American Airlines, however, objects to the extension. It’s position appears to be that AwardWallet is prohibited from providing any software tool that facilitates the ability to track the customer’s American Airlines’ mileage information. We think this is unfortunate.

If you have any questions about this matter please do not reply to this email, instead lets have a discussion in the forum:

http://awardwallet.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1940

Please make a note of your AAdvantage number and password as you will not be able to see it on AwardWallet.com after we make this change.

Thank you for your continued support of Awardwallet.com!
Thank you,
AwardWallet team.

Now this is really disappointing on the part of American. Thumbs up to Award Wallet for trying to come up with a creative solution, though thumbs down to American for wanting to make it more difficult to track our miles. I do wonder what their justification for this is? Surely not privacy concerns, since with the browser extension AAdvantage members are storing their passwords on their computers and not with Award Wallet.

As much as I love American, I’d certainly suggest sharing your displeasure about the change with them, either via Twitter or customer service.

Update: An American Airlines spokesman sends along the following explanation:

·         Upholding its long-held stance on how third-party websites access proprietary AAdvantage member details is just one of the ways American protects the benefits afforded through the AAdvantage program.

·         Because travelers’ AAdvantage account numbers and passwords can be used to claim AAdvantage mileage awards out of their accounts and access personal details, American will always protect this information.

·         Security is chief among our points of consideration when we make decisions regarding the sharing of our customers’ data with third-party websites

·         We simply cannot permit websites that have not satisfied our security requirements the access needed to track AAdvantage balances or any other function that is otherwise secured behind AA.com login credentials.

·         Consistent with these principles, it is worth noting that Points.com, an AAdvantage participant, allows many of the same types of services as other mileage tracker websites – but has fully satisfied our rigorous security requirements.

·         We are also in the process of qualifying a number of other mileage tracker websites.