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Is This The New Best Price For Buying American Airlines Miles?

ByEdward Pizzarello
a man and woman in front of a building

For those that follow closely, the most recent sale of miles announced my American Airlines likely won’t excite.

American Airlines

 

American Airlines

As they’ve changed the interface used for “Buy Miles” transactions, I actually needed to key in credit card information and get to a final review screen to get the final price:

American Airlines

That works out to just over 2 cents per mile (2.07 cents).  That’s not the lowest we’ve seen US Airways miles recently (last year they were 1.8 cents), but it’s one of the lower prices I can recall American Airlines offering in a while (there were prices as far back as 2012 that got down to about 2 cents, though they were rare sales).

The current sale runs through February 9th and offers the biggest discount right at a 75,000 mile purchase.  Other than that, your price goes up, so consider that if you are thinking about buying.

Is this a good deal?  Probably only if you’re topping off for an award.  While I enjoy my AAdvantage miles, I wouldn’t pay over 2 cents a mile just to add to my balance.  Unless the price of airfare goes up, I wouldn’t consider buying unless you needed it for a specific award or prices for miles dropped below 1.9 cents.

And, it’s unclear whether we’ll see those prices consistently in the future.  While there may be opportunities to buy miles cheaper than this in the future, I believe the writing is on the wall for prices much lower than this.  We might see something dip below 2 cents again for American or US Airways, but I think it’s getting less likely.

 

The post Is This The New Best Price For Buying American Airlines Miles? was published first on Pizza In Motion.

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My goal in life is to fill my family’s passports with stamps, creating buckets of memories along the way. You’ll find me writing about realistic ways for normal people to travel the world, whether you’re on a budget or enjoy luxury. I also enjoy taking us on the occasional detour to explore the inner workings of the travel industry.

2 Comments

  1. Also worth noting that it would be extra risky to purchase AAdvantage miles right now (as a speculative purchase) as the program would appear ripe for a devaluation. What may be an “ok” deal now could look like a horrible deal come the end of the year.

    Reply

    1. SB, while I agree there’s some risk, I wouldn’t characterize it as extra risky. I don’t think AA is going to have a major devaluation this year.

      Reply

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