American Airlines is updating AAdvantage, its frequent flyer club, to offer more rewards to its devoted members while maintaining the same status and award structure. Simultaneously, the airline is reserving certain benefits, which are already accessible to all consumers, for members alone.
American has introduced a new 15,000-point reward level that enables users to accrue more loyalty points in order to achieve AAdvantage status. However, for the upcoming earnings year, which begins on March 1, it will still require 40,000 loyalty points to attain the lowest AAdvantage level of Gold.
According to a blog post by the firm, members will also be able to accrue extra miles by using cash to pay for a seat upgrade. They will also be able to redeem miles for upgrades on select American airline partners.
Aside from this, users will be able to use their Flagship First Dining passes to redeem sit-down meals in American’s business class lounges once they have achieved AAdvantage Platinum Pro status.
Later in the year, American said, certain benefits that were previously available to all passengers will only be available to AAdvantage members. These benefits include buying a one-day pass to an Admirals Club lounge, putting a flight on hold for up to 24 hours before booking at no cost, and same-day standby to switch to an earlier domestic flight for free.
In addition, AAdvantage members will have the option to purchase a pass to visit a Flagship Lounge and have six more months than non-members to spend trip credits when canceling an online reservation.
When canceling non-refundable basic economy tickets, AAdvantage members will also be eligible to get half trip credit (for a charge) beginning of later this month.