I found them at the Mountain View, CA Costco.
The process is like any gift card at Costco. There a display of cardboard "items" along with all the other gift cards sold at Costco. Take one to the register, pay for it, and go to merchandise pickup.
The cardboard item says the following (slightly paraphrased) :
- American Airlines gift cards never expire.
- There are no fees associated with American Airlines gift cards.
- Redeemable for travel booked on AA.com or AA reservations (ticket fee may apply to phone purchases).
- Redeemable for flight purchase only and any associated taxes.
- Redeemable for purchases in and originating from US, PR, and USVI.
- Maximum 8 gift cards per reservation.
- Can be used to book with Oneworld (BA, IB, MA, S7, CX, JL, QF, AY, RJ) and code share partners from AA.com or phone reservations.
The cards say the full terms and conditions are at
http://www.aa.com/giftcard.
I can confirm there is no sales tax on the card purchase.
According to the store manager it's a test program that's being run in six US stores. Two are in Northern California; the other one is Danville.
(I don't know if the six locations is still accurate, but we're used to imperfect information in dealing with large organizations - cough, AA, cough -, right?)
When I left the manager said there was 11 left but she's trying to get more sent to the store via overnight shipping. And while she can't guarantee how many more she can get, she did say the likelihood of this continuing depends on the success of the test.
(If you're thinking of buying a bunch, she'd probably want to hear from you.)
So if you don't mind taking on a little default risk, this might be a time to stock up.