Top 10 Best Ways to Earn AAdvantage Miles

The best ways to earn AAdvantage miles, if you don't buy many paid tickets on American or its Oneworld and non-Oneworld partners, is still with Citi AAdvantage credit cards. Note that the best offers are *not* the 30K public offers, so see the Best Travel Rewards Credit Cards page for the current links. Note that you can only apply for one Citi personal credit card in a given week, although some have reported successfully applying for both a Citi personal and Citi business credit card on a given day.

But don't just limit yourself to Citi AAdvantage credit cards–there are other ways to boost your American AAdvantage miles account balances, even without paying for tickets on American and its partners. Here are my top 10, and I'd love to hear in the comments of any other AAdvantage bonus miles offers you think should be included.

The payoff? Being able to redeem AAdvantage miles for interntional first class and business class flights on partners, such as Cathay Pacific First Class (pictured above), Qantas First Class, Etihad First Class, Qatar Business Class, British Airways New First Class and more.

1. 50K Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select MasterCard

In the “good old days” it was possible to apply for 2 Citi AAdvantage credit cards on the same day and earn 75,000 AA miles in bonuses for each card, 150,000 AAdvantage miles total. Those days and the so-called “two browser trick” are long gone. Even the 50K Citi AAdvantage Platinum Visa is no more–seemingly a casualty of Citi trending towards exclusivity with MasterCard, as Chase aligns exclusively with Visa.

There still is a 50K Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select MasterCard, available to new cardholders. Citi has tightened up considerably on churning, so while the best guess is that you may be eligible to earn the bonus again for a Citi AAdvantage personal card 18-26 months after your most recent successful application, it's anyone's guess if this will still be the case for those applying for Citi AAdvantage cards now.

2. 50K CitiBusiness AAdvantage World Card

Personal credit cards and business credit cards are considered separate products, so you can earn 50K bonuses for both a Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select MasterCard and for a CitiBusiness AAdvantage World Card. Note that, while in the past in was relatively easy to churn CitiBusiness cards, that seems to have also tightened, so don't be surprised if you're declined as a past cardholder if you try to apply again for this card, even if your prior CitiBusiness AAdvantage card has been closed for awhile.

3. US Airways MasterCard

As I wrote in US Airways 40K-50K Bonus Offer-Worth It? I still view the 35K US Airways offer with no annual fee the first year as better than the new 40K-50K US Airways card offer with annual fee not waived. Keep in mind that sometime in Q2 2015 it will become possible to transfer US Airways Dividend miles to American AAdvantage miles, so even if you don't want to book a US Airways award, those miles will soon enough become AAdvantage miles.

4. BankDirect AAdvantage Mileage Checking: 60,000 AAdvantage Miles per Year for $144

BankDirect used to be my favorite passive way to earn AAdvantage miles, because it was possible to earn 240,000 AAdvantage miles a year for just a $12 per month checking account fee, which worked out to about half a cent per AAdvantage mile. After the BankDirect Devaluation, BankDirect mileage checking accounts only earn 100 AAdvantage miles per month for the first $50,000 in your account. That can still make it worth it for many folks to hold $50,000 in a BankDirect account, since even taking into account the interest you'd have earned from putting that $50,000 into an interest bearing checking account and the $12/month fee, you're paying less than 1 cent per AA mile, which is still pretty darn good.

5. 60K Citi Executive AAdvantage Card

I mentioned this offer in Citi Executive AAdvantage 60,000 Card: Buy AA Miles at Less Than 1 Cent Each. While it carries a hefty $450 annual fee, not waived the first year, it can be attractive if:

• You value Admirals Club airport lounge access (note that AMEX Platinum cardholders lose access to American Admirals Club lounges effective March 22, 2014
• You need more AA miles and already have the personal and business Citi AAdvantage cards

6. Fidelity Brokerage Account: Up to 50K AAdvantage Miles

If you have $100,000 cash on hand that you can park in a Fidelity brokerage account for at least 9 months, you can earn 50K AAdvantage miles. 

7. AAdvantage eShopping Mall Bonuses

You can earn additional AAdvantage miles simply by clicking through from the AAdvantage eShopping Mall. Note that some folks have sworn off this and other airline shopping malls run by Cartera due to never receiving their AAdvantage bonus miles for especially lucrative deals. I've only made a handful of transactions through the AAdvantage mall, most recently due to the additional AAdvantage bonus miles offered (deal now expired, but see 3000 Bonus AA Miles with $250 Spend at AAdvantage eShopping Mall) but have received my expected bonus points for all of them, although it has typically taken 3-4 weeks to post to my AAdvantage account.

8. Transfer SPG Points to AA with a 25% Bonus

9. Citi Retention Bonuses

You won't earn huge amounts of AAdvantage miles from retention bonuses, but every bit helps! See Citi AAdvantage Retention Bonus Offers.

10. Transfer AMEX Membership Rewards Points to Aeroplan Then to US Airways Dividend Miles (Which Will Become AAdvantage Miles with the Merger)

You can transfer 1 Aeroplan mile to 0.84 US Airways miles via points.com, with the minimum transfer amount 15,000 Aeroplan miles and the maximum 50,000 Aeroplan miles per transaction. So if you have a ton of AMEX Membership Rewards points and want to transfer some into AAdvantage miles, you can first transfer them 1:1 to Aeroplan, then, via points.com, transfer them at a slight haircut to US Airways Dividend miles, which will soon become AAdvantage miles.

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