American Airlines AAdvantage Award Booking Instructions

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Many U.S.-based travelers use American Airlines AAdvantage as their main frequent flyer program. If you fly on American Airlines or its Oneworld Alliance partners often, crediting flights to the AAdvantage program can help you move closer to earning elite status. And, AAdvantage elite status members receive special perks and increased miles earnings.

Unfortunately, the American Airlines AAdvantage program switched over to a dynamic pricing model in early 2023, which has made it more difficult to find outsized value redemptions. And, in some cases, it may make more sense to book certain award flights through other Oneworld Alliance programs, such as British Airways Executive Club or Qantas Frequent Flyer.

Nonetheless, at times, AAdvantage has the best available rates on certain award flights from Oneworld partners. The program also has partnerships with many airlines outside of Oneworld Alliance as well, which can help you find solid deals on award flights. So, if you’re a U.S.-based traveler, you’ll definitely want to familiarize yourself with the process of booking award flights through the AAdvantage program.

In this article, we’re going to explain everything you need to know about making award flight bookings through the AAdvantage program, including how to sign up for the program and how to quickly earn miles.

Joining American Airlines AAdvantage

In order to book an award flight through the American Airlines AAdvantage program, you’ll first need to be a member of the program. To enroll, visit the American Airlines website and click the “Join” button in the top-right corner.

Once you click that button, you’ll be asked to provide personal information, including your name, address, date of birth, gender, email address and phone number.

Once all of that information is correct, agree to the terms and conditions and click the blue “Continue” button at the bottom of the page.

This will officially enroll you in the AAdvantage program and you’ll receive your own unique membership number, which you’ll need to log in to your account and earn miles in the future. We recommend writing this number somewhere so you don’t forget it.

How To Earn American Airlines AAdvantage Miles

As a member of the AAdvantage program, you’re eligible to both earn and redeem miles. However, before you make an award flight redemption, you’ll need to save up enough miles to afford an award flight. The minimum required miles for an award flight through AAdvantage is 7,500 (which is the minimum for an American Airlines-operated flight within the contiguous 48 U.S. states). So, before you go to make an award flight booking you’ll need to have at least 7,500 miles in your account balance.

There are many ways to earn AAdvantage miles, but some of them are far more effective than others. In the following sections, we’re going to quickly look at a few of the most effective ways to earn AAdvantage miles.

American Airlines AAdvantage Co-Branded Credit Cards

One of the best ways to earn AAdvantage miles is to sign up for one of American Airlines’s many co-branded credit cards. There are a total of 11 co-branded AAdvantage cards, including six cards issued by Citi and five cards issued by Barclays. (Note that the Barclays cards will be phased out as Citi entered into an agreement to become the sole issuer of American Airlines AAdvantage credit cards starting in 2026.)

Annual fees for these credits range from $0 to $595, meaning that there’s an American Airlines credit card that will work for any budget. And, if you aren’t ready to commit to paying an annual fee for one of these credit cards, the no-annual-fee American Airlines AAdvantage MileUp℠ Card has plenty to offer, including the ability to earn AAdvantage miles on every purchase you make. Here are the spending bonuses offered by the MileUp card:

• 2X miles at grocery stores, including delivery service
• 2X miles on eligible American Airlines purchases
• 1X miles on all other purchases

With the Citi-issued MileUp card, you’ll also receive a 25% discount on in-flight food and beverages on American Airlines flights.

The MileUp card is just one of the many different American Airlines credit card offerings. So, it’s worth researching all of them before signing up for one. But, no matter which American Airlines credit card you sign up for, you’ll have the opportunity to earn tens of thousands of miles very quickly with that card’s welcome bonus. Typically, these welcome bonuses offer a large sum of points to new cardmembers who spend a certain amount of money on their card in an allotted time period after account opening. For example, here’s the current welcome offer from the Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard®:

As you can see, this welcome bonus is enough to instantly afford several award flights through the AAdvantage program, which is why applying for an American Airlines credit card is one of the best ways to earn miles with the AAdvantage program.

Flying With American Airlines and Partner Airlines

Another good way to earn AAdvantage miles is to take paid flights on American Airlines or one of its airline partners. In order to earn miles on an eligible flight, you’ll need to select AAdvantage as your frequent flyer program of choice and enter your membership number, either when making your booking or when checking in for your flight. Then, the miles you earn should be automatically credited to your account. The amount of time it takes for miles to arrive in your account depends on the airline you’re flying with.

When flying with American Airlines, the amount of miles you’ll earn for a paid flight depends on the price of your base fare as well as your status in the AAdvantage program. AAdvantage members that don’t have elite status earn 5X miles per $1 spent on base fare. So, if you took an American Airlines-operated flight that cost $200 (excluding any taxes and fees), you’d earn 1,000 miles ($200 x 5 = 1,000 AAdvantage miles).

Elite status members earn more AAdvantage miles per $1 spent on their base fare. Here’s how many miles you’ll earn at each elite status tier:

• Gold: 7X miles
• Platinum: 8X miles
• Platinum Pro: 9X miles
• Executive Platinum: 11X miles

So, if you took that same flight with a base fare of $200 as a Platinum Pro member, you’d earn 1,800 miles ($200 x 9 = 1,800 AAdvantage miles).

You can also earn AAdvantage miles by taking paid flights with any Oneworld Alliance airline. Here’s the current roster of Oneworld Alliance airlines:

• Alaska Airlines
• American Airlines
• British Airways
• Cathay Pacific
• Finnair
• Iberia
• Japan Airlines
• Malaysia Airlines
• Qantas
• Qatar Airways
• Royal Air Maroc
• Royal Jordanian
• SriLankan Airlines

AAdvantage members can also earn miles by taking paid flights with several non-Oneworld airline partners, including the following:Aer Lingus

• Air Tahiti Nui
• Cape Air
• China Southern Airlines
• Etihad Airways
• Fiji Airways
• GOL
• Hawaiian Airlines
• IndiGo
• JetBlue
• JetSMART
• Silver Airways

In terms of how many AAdvantage miles you can earn on partner-operated flights, each partner has its own earnings rates, which you can view by visiting the partner airlines page of the American Airlines website and clicking on the partner you’re going to fly with.

Some partner flights earn miles based on the cost of their base fare (just like American Airlines-operated flights) whereas other partner flights earn miles based on the actual distance of the flight and the booking class. For those flights that earn miles based on distance, you can calculate the miles you’ll earn by multiplying the distance of your flight (in miles) by the percentage associated with your booking class.

Other Ways To Earn

There are plenty of other ways to earn miles through the AAdvantage program, including shopping online, booking hotel stays, renting cars, taking cruises, dining out, buying gas for your car and more. However, none of these earning methods are all that effective on their own. Nonetheless, if you use the AAdvantage program as your primary frequent flyer program, it’s definitely worth looking into these other earning methods and racking up some extra miles here and there.

In particular, the AAdvantage Dining program is one of the best airline dining rewards programs out there and allows you to earn up to 5X miles per $1 spent on eligible dining purchases, which can definitely add up.

It’s also worth noting that, unlike most other major frequent flyer programs, American Airlines AAdvantage doesn’t allow you to earn points by transferring points from credit card rewards programs.

How To Book Award Flights Through American Airlines AAdvantage

Now that you know how to sign up for the American Airlines AAdvantage program and earn miles, let’s discuss how you can spend those miles on award flight bookings.

The first thing you’ll need to do is visit the American Airlines website and sign in to your account by clicking on the blue “Log in” button in the top-right corner of the homepage. Often, you’ll need to enter a verification code that’s sent to the email address on file in order to sign in to your account.

Once you’re signed in, you’ll return to the American Airlines website homepage and scroll down to the flight booking tool. Then, just below the field where you enter your departure airport, you’ll see a checkbox that says “Redeem miles.” Check that box to search for award flights. From there, the process of booking an award flight is almost identical to booking a cash flight.

You’ll enter your departure airport, arrival airport, type of flight (one-way or round-trip), number of passengers and travel dates. After that, click on the blue “Search” button to conduct your search.

You’ll be shown a list of flight results that match your search query. These results will include any flight results from eligible airlines (including American Airlines, Oneworld Alliance partners and other partners). You can filter the results by airline, number of stops, departure time, arrival time and flight duration.

If you have flexible travel dates, it may be helpful for you to click on the “Calendar” button near the left side of the results page. When you click this button, you’ll see a calendar with the award prices of flights on your route across the entire month. This allows you to see if you could save miles by flying on a different day.

Once you find a flight that you want to add to your itinerary, click on the award rate beneath the cabin class you want to book. For example, if you want to book a flight in the Main cabin, click the award rate in the column for that cabin class.

Repeat this process for your return flight if you’re flying round-trip. Once you’ve added all flights to your itinerary, you’ll be asked to confirm your flight itinerary and the number of required miles as well as the total taxes and fees. If this all looks good, proceed to the next page to enter your passenger details.

On this page, you’ll enter your name, date of birth, gender and country of residence. You’ll also need to add your emergency contact details on this page.

You’ll also have the option to add travel extras like seat selection and extra baggage. Finally, you’ll have to enter a payment method to cover any applicable taxes and fees for your award flight itinerary. Once you’ve done that, you can confirm your flight booking.

At this point, you’ll be redirected to a new page where you’ll see a confirmation number, which you’ll need to check in to your flight. You should also receive a confirmation email containing this number.

Once you’ve confirmed your award flight booking, the required miles should be immediately deducted from your AAdvantage account balance. If you choose to cancel your flight, your miles will be reinstated in full as long as you cancel before your flight’s departure. Taxes and fees will also be refunded with the exception of sale-imposed non-refundable taxes and taxes paid by American Airlines whether or not you travel.

The Bottom Line

The American Airlines AAdvantage program is a relatively good frequent flyer program that’s used by a lot of U.S.-based travelers due to the large footprint that American Airlines has in the United States. Since American Airlines is a member of Oneworld Alliance, AAdvantage members can both earn and redeem miles with any other Oneworld airline. Plus, there are 11 different AAdvantage co-branded credit cards with which you can earn miles on every purchase you make (as well as work towards AAdvantage elite status and receive other notable perks).

Unfortunately, the AAdvantage program has two distinct drawbacks. For one, the program isn’t a transfer partner of any of the major credit card rewards programs (such as American Express Membership Rewards or Chase Ultimate Rewards). This makes earning AAdvantage miles much more difficult than earning miles with some other frequent flyer programs. Second, the AAdvantage program prices all award flights using a dynamic pricing model, which makes finding outsized value for your mile much more difficult.

Nonetheless, even with a dynamic pricing model, you can often find decent value through the AAdvantage program. And, if you fly on American Airlines often, it may be a good idea to use AAdvantage as your primary frequent flyer program so you can work toward elite status.

So, if you have a balance of AAdvantage miles or you want to save up for a specific award flight booking through this program, you can always refer to the instructions in this article when it comes time to book your award.