american airlines

My quickie airline miles earnings so far today

DaninMCI miles, shopping, Travel , , , , , ,

I typically read Boardingarea blogs everyday for tips on earning airline miles and to learn more about being a smart traveler. Well OK to feed my addiction.

So I’m busy today and had a couple minutes so I clicked over to Boardingarea and saw one of my favorite bloggers Mommypoints who had a post about an American AA shopping portal bonus where you can earn up to 2,250 bonus miles through shopping.

Special Promotion Shop Online at AAdvantage eShopping mall

Not typically that great but if you have stuff you need to buy anyway it can be good. So what did I buy today in less than 5 minutes:

How about dog food. I have several dogs that eat Blue Buffalo Senior food (which is very good and better than most of the RX types even). So it cost be about $33 to $35 a bag plus a 12+ mile each way drive to get it. I clicked on Petco as they had the best price:

Search Shop Online at AAdvantage eShopping mall

So for 4x per $ I bought about $135 worth or 4 bags. I had to pay sales tax but got free shipping. I figured I saved time and gas money. I’ve ordered dog food online many times so it’s just easy.  So $135 x 4 miles x 1 mile for credit card = 275 AA miles plus 250 mile bonus = 525 miles approx.

I was getting ready to log off when I remembered that I needed to still do my taxes (I’m way behind this year). So I click on H&R block software that I use each year and really like.

All Online Offers Shop Online at AAdvantage eShopping mall

So for 12x per $1 I bought the $45 version I use so figure $45 x 12 x 1 for card = 585 AA miles plus I’m on my way to the next promo level of $300 so that will eventually add another 750 miles to the 250 I got already.

5 minutes = 1,110 miles added to my AA account. Next trip……

Now you can link your AA American Advantage account to your US Airways Dividend Miles account.

DaninMCI Travel , , , , , , , ,

Another step toward combining the loyalty frequent flyer situation at the new American Airlines. You can now link your US and AA accounts. The miles won’t combine yet but should in the 2nd quarter 2015. It might not hurt to go ahead and do this.

When you log into your AA or US accounts you will get a pop up like this one (AA):

My Account Flight Information

Or this one (US):

us air combine acct on acct page

Once you enter your other account number you should either get a confirmation popup:

aadvantage combine acct confirm popup

Or if they couldn’t match them you will get:

aadvantage didnt match popup

If you had trouble and they didn’t match log into each account and check that all your names, phone number and date of birth, etc. all match. My wife’s account failed because she had only her middle initial on US Air but had her whole middle name on American. Once I fixed it it went through fine.

If you click past the popup or want to do it later you will find a link in your account page. Here is the AA example:

aadvantage combine option on myaccount page

What does all this mean right now? Not much yet but I still think it’s too your advantage (pardon the pun) to go ahead and link them. I think this may hold more true for elites in either program but that is just guessing on my part. As they go through the IT process of combining the programs it will eventually combine your miles and accounts together at some point in the 2nd quarter. Speculation is that it will happen early 2nd quarter but we will see.