Best way to purchase AA tickets
 

Is there a best method of purchasing AA tickets?

Some card programs offer 2 miles per $ or more when purchasing airfare. I have a handful of citi AA cards, the British Airways Chase, UA Chase and SPG cards.

I am about to make a large airfare purchase and want to maximize my mileage.

the ba card gets 1.25 mi/$.....i think the citi's give 1, what have you received from them?....what do you get from spg?.....

are you looking for a new card?

good luck....

Any Chase card that is part of their Ultimate Rewards program earns 2% (cash) on all airfare booked through their website. I don't think the cards you mentioned are part of Ultimate Rewards, since they give miles, but the Chase Freedom and Sapphire cards both are. In my experience the website is an okay booking engine - it seems to use Expedia as the backend, so anything that you can find on Expedia is bookable there.

American Express Premier Rewards Gold offers 3 Membership Rewards points per dollar on airfare:

http://www201.americanexpress.com/ge...r-Rewards-Gold

...and American Express is currently offering two bonus Membership Rewards points per mile on airfare through the promotion discussed in this thread (although it isn't verified that the promotional bonus can be stacked with the Premier Rewards permanent bonus):

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/ameri...purchases.html

I think Citi and SPG treats it like a normal purchase. I'm not really sure and don't know how to check. I'm not looking to get a new card, just asking which one I should use.

I don't have the AMEX Membership Reward card, but did get a targeted offer for one. That might have been a nice option.

The Citi card does treat AA tickets as regular purchases - 1 mile per dollar.

The SPG card gives 1 Starpoint per dollar. This translates into 1.25 miles per dollar if transferred in increments of 20,000 Starpoints (otherwise 1 mile per dollar).

This quarter, you can actually get 5% cashback on up to something like $1200 spent on travel through Chase rewards. You have to register with Chase first. If you prefer cash to miles, this is pretty good.

the fact that CITI AAdvantage VISA/MC/AMEX cards only give you 1 mile per dollar spent at aa.com makes it a very lame card

All others give you some incentive for using their card on their sites...i.e. Alaska, Contintental, UAL, and even lame-O Delta....but not AA.

It takes a little bit of work and you have to plan ahead, but I buy AA gift cards and get 4 miles per dollar spent. Use the Aadvantage eshopping portal to buy the cards from giftcertificates.com and get 3 miles per dollar spent plus the 1 mile from CitiAA (they don't take Amex). The cards come in denominations up to $250 and there is a small fee for shipping so the best way to do it is to buy one of their super certificates for as much as you can (i do $2,000 to $4,000 at a time to pay for work trips) and then have them ship me everything in $250 cards. You can then enter the gift cards at purchase on AA.com

Like I said, it takes a bit of work and lead time, but until CitiAA starts paying more miles for AA purchases like UA does, it's the best way I've found to maximize miles.

This is great. I had always looked for a way to get a little cashback or extra miles for buying flights on AA but never found anything worthwile.

Some months back I received a Citi offer in the mail. If I responded they would give 1.2 miles/$1 instead of 1 (all purchases). I had switched to SPG so I didn't respond. A few weeks ago I had to make a large business purchase that didn't take AMEX. I called Citi and asked about receiving 1.2 miles/$1. They said I just needed to enroll and did it over the phone.

I agree with MIA about using the AMEX Premier Gold Rewards Card to get the extra earnings but they do not transfer miles to AAdvantage in their MR program.

When I book with AA I use my Chase Freedom Card for cash back and supposedly this quarter they are offering 5% on travel as well (if they are allowing that on all past versions of the Freedom Card).

Are you saying you get 4 miles/$ or 8/$?

Just be aware you end up losing any protections you have from your credit card (travel insurance, etc.) by buying a ticket using giftcards.

I get 4 miles - 3 from the eshopping portal and 1 from CitiAA card.