What to do with AAdvantage miles.

[mirrodie]

Due to increased speculation about mergers from Delta, US Airways, PE, etc. What do you do with your miles?

Based on a story in a Jan 13, 2012 paper, AA has 20% chance of coming out independent. One analyst says "We remain skeptical of the viability of AMR as a post-bankruptcy airline.." setting the odds of AMR's remaining independent at 20% at most.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...le+Feedfetcher (http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-american-airlines-20120113,0,5339526.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fbusiness+%28L.A.+Ti mes+-+Business%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher)

Another analyst says that "All this makes for a long, messy bankruptcy with no guarantee when or even if AMR will emerge as a going concern, especially given the chronically oversupplied airline industry..."
http://blogs.star-telegram.com/sky_t...-american.html (http://blogs.star-telegram.com/sky_talk/2012/01/what-analysts-say-about-deltatpg-potential-bids-for-american.html)



With these statements do you:
(1) Accelerate usage of miles?
or
(2) Keep status quo?

If you choose (1), what are your suggested ways to accelerate usage of AA miles?

(e.g., Point transfer, oneworld airline tickets in future, more aa tickets in near future while still viable, etc.)

If not, do you just hold onto your miles and HOPE for the best??? What would YOU do?

[Matt Molnar]

I would use them now. I don't think AA will disappear, nor do I think their miles would disappear in the event of a merger. Chances are high, however, that service will be cut somewhat substantially and award flights will be harder to obtain.

[gonzalu]

I would not want to fly nor work in a place where you don;t know if the employees will have a job at the end of the day. THis makes people not do their jobs at 100% and that scares me. I think that supporting them will not help.

[Zee71]

Can you convert them over to hotel points, such as Marriott? I don't see Marriott going out of business anytime soon.

Holy smokes.......I have about 71,000 AA miles as well, I better start cracking as well.

[gonzalu]

Mark, try this site. It's worked for me many times :-)

https://www.points.com

or...

http://www.smartertravel.com/travel-advice/transfer-miles-between-frequent.html?id=17201

[Zee71]

Will take a peek at these...........thank Q

[viapanam]

Based on past track records, miles are safe - if AA merged, the miles move to the surviving program. In the case of UA and CO, they are still in the processing into a single program. All the majors went through bankruptcy and to my knowledge, no miles were lost. As for status, that I am not sure of. I have almost 2 million miles on AA, which will give me lifetime platinum when I get there (end of this year I hope) - but that I suspect could be lost in a merger, unless AAdvantage is the remaining program.

[puckstopper55]

I was thinking of using my miles anyway, and once I heard of their filing, that was the deciding factor. I booked a few flights to the left coast. Gotta decide what to do with my balance.

[PhilDernerJr]

I used to use my AA miles for magazine subscriptions. I still have a 5-year subscription backlog of Vibe.

[RDU-JFK]

I used to use my AA miles for magazine subscriptions. I still have a 5-year subscription backlog of Vibe.

"What am I gonna do with 40 subscriptions to Vibe?"

Name the movie! :biggrin:

[steve1840]

"What am I gonna do with 40 subscriptions to Vibe?"

Name the movie! :biggrin:

Office Space of course! :cool:

[PhilDernerJr]

Haha, exactly my reference when mentioning vibe. I used to get other magazines.

[hiss srq]

I have a measely 2K miles with AA.... I have bought 4 tickets on my own dime in the last 10 years. I like to keep it that way.

[mirrodie]

Will personally I like to use my miles on big trips. Business or first class tickets. But as it stands right now I don't see any big trips coming up with my kids so young, so I may just continue to bank them. It's a tough call perhaps in a year or two will do it big Disney trip and maybe I'll use them that way I should say

[PhilDernerJr]

For soem reason I never trust miles as a healthy long term investment. I could be wrong, but I feel like the longer you hold on to them, the better chance of the airline decreasing their value, changing what you can do with them, or losing them altogether if your airline takes a dump (though you'd have more notice on that).

[T-Bird76]

For soem reason I never trust miles as a healthy long term investment. I could be wrong, but I feel like the longer you hold on to them, the better chance of the airline decreasing their value, changing what you can do with them, or losing them altogether if your airline takes a dump (though you'd have more notice on that).

Very true! The longer you hold on to them the less value they will have towards free travel. Mario you can use miles for products as well on AA.com. I went from have 800K in AA miles in 2010 to now 6,000. Used them for trips and now I don't feel I have to always fly AA to make the miles worth it. All the airlines have devalued their programs over the last few years.

[mirrodie]

Now that aa will use new 777ers on the dfw Sao run, maybe we'll have to snag a j or f class flight to south America!

[T-Bird76]

Now that aa will use new 777ers on the dfw Sao run, maybe we'll have to snag a j or f class flight to south America!

Trust me...you don't want to go to SAO...was there for biz...ugly city. They are going to use the 773 on the JFK-LHR route as well.