View from the Wing

Following yesterday’s 15% off on American flights to the Los Angeles area, American is also offering 15% off on flights from California to everywhere they fly with promotion code CALIGO.

Flights must be booked before January 23, 2008 for travel through March 13, 2008, and cannot include flights on February 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24.

Promo code DFHOLLYWDGO is valid for 15% off American Airlines one-way or roundtrip flights to Los Angeles, Burbank, Orange County, and Ontario.

Book by January 22 for travel between February 26, 2008 and April 30, 2008 (excluding March 14-16, March 21-25, or March 28-31). Valid for coach only, up to six passengers on one reservation.

American is offering progressive bonuses for London flights — each successive roundtrip of the same fare type earns more bonus miles than the last. Registration required.

Three business class roundtrips earn 60,000 bonus miles.  Three lowest coach fare roundtrips earn 7500 bonus miles.   One business class roundtrip and one discount coach roundtrip earns 12,500 miles (10,000 + 2500).

Tickets must be purchased and flown between January 11, 2008, and May 15, 2008.

For travel between January 1 and March 12, American AAdvantage is offering discounted redemption on Iberia, the best deals being business class from either Boston or Washington, DC to Madrid for 60,000 miles instead of the usual 90,000.

If only my plans were taking me to Spain in March instead of April!

Citibank is offering 25,000 bonus miles and first year free for the Ameircan Airlines business and personal mastercards and personal American Express. All cards require $750 in spending within the first four months to qualify for the bonus.

These cards can generally be churned every few months, and signing up for all is 75,000 miles at a pop.

Because Reliant Energy offers American Airlines miles for using their electricity.

The ‘up to 7500 miles’ are broken up and awarded after the 2nd, 6th, and 12th invoices. And I don’t know what their pricing etc. is like.

But miles are the second reason (no state income tax is the first) for me to consider moving to Texas.

Transfers of 50,000 Diners Club points to American Airlines by August 31, 2007 earn a 5000 mile bonus.

American and Citibank are offering up to 40,000 bonus miles with a new American Mastercard. The offer is:

• 20,000 points for spending $750 in 4 months
• 10,000 points for spending $10,000 during the first year
• 10,000 points for $10,000 in purchases during the second year
• First year fee waived

Upside of the offer: lots of points if you can meet the spending requirements (which really aren’t that onerous on a monthly average basis).

Downsides of the offer: you need to keep the card past year one (while the fee is waived) in order to max out the miles — so you need to pay $85 in the second year or receive no more than 30,000 miles.

The offer is available for both the personal and business cards so you can actually earn 80,000 miles through the special offer…

And despite the strange structure of the bonuses (designed to get you to make this a heavily used card and to keep it over time), the offer is better than the regular offers available with the card.

The Upgrade: Travel Better blog discusses American’s discounted business fares that include upgrades to 3-cabin first class.

Meanwhile, American is launching non-stop service from Chicago to Shannon, Ireland using domestic configured aircraft. As with their existing Boston to Manchester, England flights, they’ll use a Boeing 757 with 22 domestic first class seats. Only thing is they’re selling only coach for these flights, and providing coach service. But American and Oneworld elites can reserve these seats like any other. Not a great international upgrade, but better than coach, much like the Premium Economy products offered by international carriers.

Specially marked packages of Swiss Knights Fondue and Cheese are offering 500 American Airlines miles. You can pick the stuff up at Costco, Traders Joes, and some supermarkets. Some folks looking to top off their American Airlines accounts may find buying long shelf-life, no need to refrigerate cheese worthwhile just for the miles.

The economics aren’t quite as good as buying pudding once was but I suppose you, too, can reduce your cost basis by donating the fondue to charity and taking a tax writeoff.

Product website is short on details, such as how long the promotion will run or whether there’s a maximum number of codes a single individual can redeem for their account.

There’s been a Flyertalk thread over the past two months on how to earn 10,000 American miles at more or less no cost by opening a Citibank checking and e-savings account and linking an American Airlines Mastercard to those accounts. Even though I have an AA Mastercard!

(After all, you can get 20,000 miles or more with first purchase or $250 in purchases with fee waived the first year — and you can cancel before the fee is due, and they’ll give you signup bonuses many times).

But the Free Frequent Flyer Miles website has done a writeup on the offer, and now I have no excuse not to participate.

Cribbed from their latest update:

Super offer through December 31, 2006: Get 10,000 American Airlines miles for linking your existing American Airlines credit card to a new Citibank e-savings account within 30 days of funding the new account. You need not be a new Citibank customer to accept this offer. It is o.k. if you already have these accounts. Just open new ones. You need $100 to fund the required new checking account that goes with this account, and $1 to fund the e-savings account, but after funds clear there is no minimum balance required so long as you keep open both accounts, and no monthly maintenance fees. The procedure:


• You must first have a Citibank American Airlines Mastercard. Getting one now will earn you an additional free 20,000 miles. See the Annual Fee Cards page (though the card is free for a year) of my Credit Card section to see how.
  

• Call (877) 681-9200 and tell the rep you want full information on offer code CS2R. If asked, say that you heard if from a friend. Sorry, I can find no way to get the details online. I have spent a great deal of time tracking them down for you (and me).
  

• Open the new e-savings and checking accounts during that phone call. You risk the system not registering you for this offer if you do anything online. You may fund the account by transfer from another bank account while on the phone(very easy if it is an existing Citibank account) or by check after the accounts are opened.
  

• Within 10 business days you will receive a welcome kit and (I am told) the details of this offer. (As of November 11, 2006, I haven’t received mine yet.)
  

• After you receive the kit and within 30 days of opening the account, call (800)745-1534 and chose option 1. Tell the rep you want to link your Citibank American Airlines Mastercard to the new e-savings account, and give the info required. Be sure to give your American Airlines AAdvantage frequent flyer number.
  

• The 10,000 miles should post within 120 days of the closing date of the statement within which you got all of this done. (But the Flyertalk thread I tell you about below starting with post #89 says that the miles actually post 5 days after linking your credit card.) Keep the accounts open until you see the miles post. But you will probably like them anyway. On November 11, 2006, the e-savings account was paying an APY of 5%.

American wants you to text WORLD to 88398 and they’ll send you back a 10% discount code valid on roundtrips originating in Chicago.

Discount requires booking by December 19 for travel through March 31, 2007.

The traditional outstanding offer for the American Airlines Mastercard is 20,000 bonus points with first purchase and fee waived the first year. I guess too many people were cancelling the card before the fee hit, because there’s a new offer that ups the ante — 20,000 bonus points with first purchase, fee waived the first year, and 5000 more points after a year.

Strictly speaking I don’t know when the 5000 additional points will post, perhaps you’ll have already paid the annual fee or perhaps it’s still within the timeframe that you can cancel without owing the fee (even if the $85 has shown up on your credit card statement already). Either way, the offer is clearly aimed at getting folks to keep the card through the first year’s renewal.

5000 points for $85 may or may not be your bag, but an interesting offer nonetheless and the current best of class for the card as far as I’m concerned.

One of the neat things about the American Airlines Mastercard is that cardholders have access to discounted awards to specific destinations which change each quarter.

I don’t actually find the card worth the annual fee, but since it’s generally available for 20,000 bonus miles with first purchase and fee waived the first year, and since you can earn this bonus with fee waiver multiple times, I generally have a free version of the card in my wallet at all times.

The new quarter’s discounted awards are out. Domestic sale destionations drop to 17,500 miles for a coach award (down from 25,000) and 37,500 for a first class award (down from 45,000). Even Paris is on sale for 32,500 miles in coach durin gthe dead time of October 15 - December 31 and Osaka, Japan is on sale for 42,500 miles in coach during the month of October.

Cinemark Theatres are again offering American Airlines miles for the purchase of a large soda.

Back in 2004 the offer was just 100 miles per soda. Now it appears that not all codes are winners, but at least 1 in 5 are and those receive a minimum of 500 miles and a long-shot chance for 100,000 miles.

Sounds great, right? Just go to a Cinemark theatre and dumpster dive for these codes off sodas and get some award tickets.

Alas there’s a limit of 10 Instant Win 500 AAdvantage miles Game Piece codes and two 5,000 AAdvantage miles Game Piece codes per account. Of course, each member of your family can have a separate account and I’m willing to bet that excess codes wind up on eBay…

Since there aren’t any Cinemark theatres near me I’ll consider writing in for game pieces:

For a free Game Piece, send a self-addressed stamped envelope in a business size (#10) envelope with first-class postage affixed, to: Cinemark/Coca-Cola Promotion Game Piece, 3900 Dallas Parkway, Suite 500, Plano, TX 75093, to be postmarked by September 1, 2006 and received by September 8, 2006. All requests must be handwritten. No mechanically reproduced requests permitted. Limit one request per outer envelope.

Citibank is offering 25,000 American Airlines miles for purchases of $250 or more on a new American Mastercard.

It’s today’s (day 18) American AAdvantage 25th Anniversary offer, though I owe the heads up to the indispensable free MilesLink newsletter.

I still like the 20,000 mile offer better because it comes with fee waived the first year, and a simple $1 gas purchase will trigger the bonus. The 25,000 mile offer’s $85 fee comes immediately, so you’re paying 1.7 cents a mile for the incremental 5000 miles.

Update: the offer mentioned in MilesLink and today’s AAdvantage25 offer are different.

The former is 25,000 miles for $250 in spend and an $85 annual fee. The latter is 25,000 miles for $250 in spend and fee waived the first year.

In theory you have to apply today to get this offer. However, if the Citibank page detailing it is still around later (and experience suggests it will be) you can probably continue to get it in the future. Here’s the direct Citibank link whose terms and conditions specify the fee waiver. Make sure you print it and save it for later, just in case!

American is celebrating 25 years of their AAdvantage program this month with 25 separate offers, one available each day for 25 days.

Today is the third day, and the offer is that you can register for 25% bonus miles on your spending with the Citibank American Airlines Mastercard posted on your May, June, and July statements (up to 2500 bonus miles, that is based on up to $10,000 in spending).

The spending cap reduces the potential value of the offer, but it’s still worthwhile, and the daily offer website is worth checking, well, daily.

In addition to Hyatt’s offer of 1000 Cathay Pacific AsiaMiles per night, they’re also putting the choice of 1000 American Airlines points per night on offer as well from March 15 through June 30.

Last month I reported that American Airlines was offering 2500 miles for test driving a Lincoln. (250 miles also on offer for watching a video about Lincoln.)

Now they’ve upped the offer to 5000 miles for a test drive (and 50,000 miles for purchase, along with the original 250 miles for watching the video).

I’ll finally get off my duff and go for a test drive this weekend!

The new 5000 mile offer does say that it was targeted, though I have no idea if there’s actually a way for them to check who got this in their American Airlines eSummary. You might just use the old 2500 mile offer, but I’m going to use the new one.

It’s part of their broadside against Southwest, they’ve titled their press release American Airlines Gets Serious About Competing at Love Field

Starting March 2 through May 26, customers who fly three roundtrips between Dallas Love Field or DFW International Airport and Kansas City, St. Louis, Austin and San Antonio can earn 30,000 AAdvantage bonus miles

…

Fly six roundtrips in the same time period and earn an additional 30,000 bonus miles

Registration is required with promo code FLY3.