enviroian

I have the Citi exec card that gives me AC access. Up until a year ago it have me a s load of travel insurance benefits but those are all gone now. I"ve had an AMEX green card since 1987 and rarely use it but thinking I should upgrade it to platinum to get those travel benefits back and Centurion lounge access. The Citi card is $475/year and I probably don't use the AC enough to warrant it's spend and even more so that travel insurance benefits have been stripped. Membership Miles don't transfer to Advantage do they? I forgot how one redeems free tickets with AMEX.

Thanks

mia

It's now called Membership Rewards. No transfer to AA, but read the Wikipost at the top of this thread for a list of ways to use points for travel on flights operated by AA:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/amer...l-program.html

Gig103

If there are Centurion, Priority Pass, or Escape lounges in your frequent airports, I'd say I would rather have access to any of those than the Admirals Clubs. You can still choose AA for your $200 airline incidentals (if you have any). You could also get the Plat card and downgrade your Citi to the $95 Barclays card to keep earning AA miles (except on the flights which you'd get your insurance and 5x from Platinum) and get your free bags and priority boarding.

But as Mia said, you can't transfer to AA. There are Oneworld partners though for award flights. There also is/was a nifty unpublished fare thing going on with AA:
Booking AA via AMEX for less than aa.com?

GTITAN

Hey Enviroan,

Amex PLT holder and an AA EP.. PHX, DFW, MIA, CLT and JFK all have Centurion Lounges. I have both cards, but use my AA Ex MC just for AC access at this point. Think of it as highly discounted AC membership. The Amex PLT is a good card for fligh purchases on AMEX travel and on the airline website.. If you want to book AAward Space on AA, you can transfer to BA or to Etihad.

Safe Travels

mia

To be clear, there is no "downgrade" path from a card issued by Citi to a card issued by Barclays. You would need to apply for the Barclays card. However, you could downgrade the Citi Executive to the Citi AAdvantage Platinum or Citi AAdvantage MileUp card.

javabytes

I have it. I’m able to make good use of the fee credits and Uber credits, so it’s not much out of pocket in the end. I really only put 5x airfare spend on it... you can do the math on your annual airfare spend but it doesn’t take much to surpass the AA branded cards that earn only 2x.

For a long time, transferring to BA was been better than transferring to AA for short haul nonstop awards... especially if you are not EXP, because BA caps the cancellation fee at the taxes and fees you paid... so for domestic nonstops, that’s $5.60 each way. Now the cheap economy web specials are changing that math a bit if you’re EXP.

I’ve also been able to do great things transferring to ANA. Things like US to Aus/NZ in J for 120k round trip... and you can book 355 days out so you get first crack at awards almost a month before US carriers even let you book.

Being ORD-based I really don’t set foot in Centurion lounges much, but if you have one at your home airport that can be a nice benefit too.

jerseytom

Yay from me. Around CLT and fly AA pretty much exclusively for domestic travel. Big fan of the Centurion Lounge and definitely think it beats the Admiral's Club.

With that said I get my primary redemption value out of transferring points to ANA for Asia trips here and there. At $0.10 per point that's hard to beat. And I only put airline and hotel bookings on it.

I do still have the Platinum Select MasterCard for miscellaneous spend just to have some extra trickle of AAdvantage miles into my account.

enviroian

Good tips all thanks. I use my award miles on AA for DFW—Europe J flights. Sounds like a big deal to transfer points from Amex to BA then redeem on AA metal.

GTITAN

Actually, i f you transfer to Etihad, you can get the pre-AAdvantage devaluation for AA (i.e. 50K o/w for J awards to Europe).

Safe Travels

enviroian

Is this legit? I couldn’t find these benefits on Amex website. These are very solid benefits and what my Citi exec USED to offer.

plus they have a 75,000 point bonus for 5K spend first 3 months

https://millionmilesecrets.com/guide...tion-benefits/

mia

Trip Delay, Cancellation and Interruption are new benefits discussed here:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/amer...ect-cards.html

Follow the two links in the Wikipost of that thread to read the actual coverage documents. Note the cap on the number of claims per year -and- the varying requirements to pay with the American Express card.

guv1976

Be careful with this. If you can find MileSAAver seats on AA nonstops from DFW to Europe, Etihad miles are great. But AA often requires connections to get to Europe on MileSAAver awards (especially in premium cabins) and recent reports on FT indicate that Etihad now charges separately for each flight flown when redeeming on AA.