The first sentence uses the term "purchases", OTOH the second sentence use a different wording "purchases posted" (bolding is mine).

It seems they don't realize that charges typically don't post on the same date that they were performed. If you spend today, it would be posted tomorrow in the best case. So what happens if you make some purchase on February 29, that would most likely post to your credit card on March? Note that this has nothing to do with the statement closing date.

I noticed this too. Unless clarified, I will assume they mean the transaction date that shows on your credit card statement. For example, I'm assuming a 2/29 transaction that posts with a 3/1 date will count towards next year -- i.e., if one is close and needs LPs, I wouldn't rely on transactions on 2/29. FWIW, this is how it works on AX with the Saks credit. I bought something once on 12/31 that didn't post until 1/2 and missed the $50 credit (until AX had mercy on me after I asked them to).

i was curious about this so i started to pay attention to charges.

every charge i watched, initially showed a date of 'x' when my card was run. it took between 1 to several days for a particular charge to post to the account, but the date shown for the charge remained the date it initially showed. ie the posted date was the date charged, regardless of the time it took to change from pending to posted.

I definitely have cases where the vendor ran the authorization (and hence resulted in a pending charge) yet the posted date was different. Hotels are a great example of this. Amazon is another case where the transaction date on the CC statement seems to match the date Amazon ships the item, not the date I ordered the item. I suspect they don't run the CC until the item is ready to ship, which is definitely the next day in some cases for me. My point is -- be careful if one really needs the LPs to cross a threshold by 2/29/2024. I wouldn't recommend anyone cut it close.

are you talking about specifically your citi card cobranded with AA? I assume other banks might have other posting policies. But thats what I saw on my citi card.

hotels might be a special exception. because they authorize the charge on x date, but typically dont charge the card till checkout - with the excpetion of prepaid rates. so the authorization might disappear before the card is actually charged.

my observations apply specifically to charges processed on X day, not just authorizations.

Yes, both of my Citi credit cards (one is AA, one is a regular Citi card).

Loyalty Points on a AA ticket with mixed airlines?
 

Hi all,

So I am looking at an upcoming trip and for the life of me, can’t figure out how many Loyalty Points I should earn. Given the timing and where I’m tracking this late in the year, every mile is going to count. Can anyone help me figure this out? I’m no rookie here but simply can’t find the resources from AA to calculate this. Doesn’t seem like it can be calculated strictly on fare, due to the QR and Vistara marketed flights. Is it a mix of fare based and distances based?



It’s an AA ticket - say $9k fare + $1k carrier fees + few hundred in taxes. Business class.



JFK-DOH, AA marketed, QR operated (booking code D)



DOH-BOM, QR marketed/operated (booking code D)



BOM-DEL, Vistara marketed/operated (booking code D)



DEL-JFK, AA marketed/operated (booking code C)



Appreciate any help!

Sorry but that just gave me a headache ;) Too much, I will offer that recently i got effed on a LHR trip in J/F,- that i booked through a TA. Apparently it was a consolidator fare, which accrued miles and LPs based on distance vs spend. I estimate 20k in lost LPs. Be careful out there :).

Have you tried using the non-official LP Calculator: https://lpcalculator.com/#/landing

Yes, it will post based on a mix of fare earning for the AA marketed segments and distance earning for the QR marketed segments.

No one here (nor any of the online calculators) will be able to tell you exactly how many miles and LP's you will earn because that depends on the exact fare breakout between the segments.

One method to try and estimate the fare breakout is by flight distance, i.e. your total trip is roughly 16k flight miles, and the AA marketed segments account for 14k of that, or 88%.

So you might earn $10k fare × 11 LP/$ (if EXP) x 88% = 96,800 LP's for the AA marketed segments, plus whatever the distance earning will be for the QR segment (that part is easy to figure out).

Thanks, this is helpful. Is there precedent on how AA has calculated similar trips?

In terms of the fare breakout, the ticket I’m looking at is actually all AA. Fare is AA in both directions (JFK-BOM and BOM-JFK), which must allow for flights on both QR and Vistara as part of the touring.

For earnings what matters is the marketing carrier, and the fact that it's operated by a partner.

So the Vistara segment will earn nothing because they are not an AA partner (look at wheretocredit to see if you can credit that segment somewhere else. If you do that keep paper boarding passes for all you segments)

The other segments will earn according to marketing carrier. So the QR marketed segment will earn according to the QR chart (on the AA website). The AA marketed segment will earn by fare.

Assuming it's not a constructed fare, there is actually no fare for individual segments (the ticket is sold as a whole) so they need to prorate it somehow. They may do this by distance (though no guarantees) so if you want to estimate it you can figure out what percentage of total distance flown is on the AA marketed flights and take that percentage of the fare. But that's just an estimate.

Again, this assumes that it's not a constructed fare. Do you have the fare breakdown?

I very recently did a similar trip to the OP's and at the end, i could not make heads or tails of how the final breakdown was calculated. Mine was xPHL, but similar intra India, mix of AA/QR/Vistara - none of it made any sense In the end except that I was able to precisely calculate the distanced based QR/Fare bucket LP's. The AA portions, i finally gave up and accepted that it was not worth my time to try and make sense of it. I can tell you, there's no chance mine was based upon distance percentage (i did calculate that, and it did not end up close).

Thank you, this is really helpful, although, is the answer I was afraid I’d get. It’s absolutely unreasonable to not know how many points you’ll earn until after the trip, and even more unreasonable to not be able to reconcile the calculation.

Would you mind sharing how your trip posted? Would be super helpful.

I had an itinerary to New Zealand/Australia (four AA flights, one QF flight with a AA codeshare flight number) where I expected to earn about 17k miles/LPs based on the fare I paid (about $1500 before taxes in regular economy) and my status level.
For some reason, I was given distance-based miles/LPs instead. I earned 38k miles/LPs, including cabin class bonus for two PE flights (cash upgrade offers).