tosaket,

It's a good thing perhaps that you didn't get your Admirals Club passes yet, if you didn't need them yet. Because if you get them after the middle of the year, they're good through the end of the next year. But if you get them before the middle of the year, they're only good through the end of that year.

Anyway, you have to call Citi and ask about the passes, if it's already been 8 months since you applied for the card.


As to annual fee, before converting, read this thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...all-cards.html

you may be able to get another year or two with "offset" annual fee (ie, an offer where they give you a credit equal to the annual fee after you do a little more spend, typically something like 5 purchases of any amount).

So I would recommend converting only if you can't get that.

I don't know if a permanently-no-annual-fee AA card is still available. It used to be called "Bronze", but I seem to remember reading somewhere that it may have been discontinuied.

Citi can't convert any card to just any card necessarily (they have their different types of credit cards somewhat "divided up" and kept very separate), so you may just want to wait to see what Citi suggests you convert to, and learn in advance what other types of Citi cards there are.