Originally Posted by
WWannabe
Am I correct that simply booking a non-reward flight (for a time after your current expiration) is not considered an activity? I.e., my miles don't expire until September, but I want to book a flight for the following January.
No, booking a non-reward flight is an activity for which you will earn miles for the flight date, thus extending activity in your account, in your case it is for January, but your miles will have expired in Sept, it does not help you.
Originally Posted by
WWannabe
If I book a flight for January and request upgrades to that flight using our miles, would this do it?
Yes, as long as the upgrade comes through prior to your miles expiring, Sept. But if the upgrade comes afterward, no, it wont help out, your miles would have expired and you will loose the upgrade since you do not have miles to pay for it.
Originally Posted by
WWannabe
I have time to solve this problem, miles don't expire for a while. I'd rather hang on to them than use them. My current plan is to use our cards for hotel stays using probably Choice hotels. If that doesn't pan out, I'll either buy miles (April deal), or donate some miles to charity.
If we can hang on to them until next year, we can use our miles to upgrade on a British Airways flight to Europe--much more valuable I think.
Why do they have to make all this so complicated?
Yes, you do have about 5 months for the expiration, however, I would certainly do something now to extend the expiration date, the last thing you want is some issue with the mileage posting and then dealing with this, while at the same time trying to use the miles for something else.
Many posters come here at the last moment, "my miles expire tomorrow, what do I do?" and are short on time on what to do. You can buy something (iTunes) from the AA web portal, donate to charity, magazine subscription, credit a car rental to AA, online reviews of hotels, etc, etc. My other suggestion is to set your self a reminder for about 15 months from now check back your AA account, so that you can refresh the clock on it and not repeat this again.
I don't think they make this complicated. There are numerous options out there on how to extend the clock, it is up to the user to determine which one to do. I have a spreadsheet with all my air & hotel totals and expiration dates, set myself a reminder for 3 months prior to expiration and pro actively do some activity to extend the clock.