Deal Or No Deal?

Tony I don't know if the numbers add up, but what I do know is that I don't trust the airlines when it comes to changing the rules of their FF programs.

Half way in Stan's camp. Always a risk of a program change over two years. Second, my recent experience with ff tickets is that the fees associated with the free ticket are constantly increasing. The only place that I have found that ff pay is using the points for business class tickets. Using for coach is close to a push. And finally, the availability and schedules when you want to use the points. For me it would be a coin toss.

I go by the rule of thumb that an airline mile is worth about $0.015. The problem I foresee is that when you go to redeem the miles in the future, there will be nothing available for what you want in the 50k category, but they'll come back with, "We can get you what you want for 100k." Now you are paying $1900 for a ticket you can buy for $1300. I don't have a problem collecting miles, and sometimes I actually find an opportunity to use them, but I don't count on it.

ditto the others. Keep in mind that the availability of flights either for purchase or for upgrades is limited and will not reflect the airline's complete offerings. For example, say you would like to purchase a flight from San Francisco to London on United. On any given day there might be a number of different flights/routes, including those w/ stopovers, those using partner airlines either in part or in full. Those that are available for purchase using miles (whether in economy, biz, or 1st) will often be limited and might not be the best flights. Same goes for flight that are available for cabin upgrades using miles.

It depends on your ultimate goal. If your goal is to simply save as much money as possible on your flights, than maybe this is worth it but if you're very particular about your flight/route (i.e., flights w/ no layovers, flights that don't use partner airlines, etc.), then you may want to take that into consideration

Ditto what all the previous posters have said.

Unless you can book your flight right now, simultaneously with when you are purchasing the extra miles, I would probably not take advantage of this offer.

If you are ready to book for a time in 2016 for which the airline has flights available, you could go ahead and call, saying you want to use Advantage Miles for that booking (yes it will cost you a little to have a rep book the ticket vs. doing yourself on line, but would be worth the fee in this case). Then WHILE THE REP is on the line and can verify that you can actually use the miles for the flight you want, then buy the miles on the spot.

But, there is no way I would personally buy the miles then wait until 2016 to book a flight......for all the reasons everyone above mentioned.

It is actually sometimes easier to book a coach ticket and use miles to upgrade to business, than to just book a coach ticket using miles. Even then, it can be hard to upgrade on certain popular flights/routes. And, I'm sure you know there will still be fees associated with the ticketing just to use your miles. For a recent trip, we had to pay $175 each way ($350 per person) and then the $25 or $35 agent assistance fee (but it was so worth it when booking for two people using FF miles...just to make sure you actually get on the same plane).

And, while I am not in charge of the AA miles program, we seem to get special offers to buy miles "all the time" from the various airlines.

Another way to log up a lot of miles is to do your shopping thru them. They offer a bunch of on-line merchants....my sister and her family rack up gobs of miles that way. So, if you buy the LandsEnd or some other merchant, just click on the AA shopping program, which takes you to that site, and then you rack up miles for all you buy. That's also a good way to keep activity on your FF account, so miles don't expire from lack of activity, if you have miles at several airlines.

Ditto what all the previous posters have said.

Unless you can book your flight right now, simultaneously with when you are purchasing the extra miles, I would probably not take advantage of this offer.

If you are ready to book for a time in 2016 for which the airline has flights available, you could go ahead and call, saying you want to use Advantage Miles for that booking (yes it will cost you a little to have a rep book the ticket vs. doing yourself on line, but would be worth the fee in this case). Then WHILE THE REP is on the line and can verify that you can actually use the miles for the flight you want, then buy the miles on the spot.

But, there is no way I would personally buy the miles then wait until 2016 to book a flight......for all the reasons everyone above mentioned.

It is actually sometimes easier to book a coach ticket and use miles to upgrade to business, than to just book a coach ticket using miles. Even then, it can be hard to upgrade on certain popular flights/routes. And, I'm sure you know there will still be fees associated with the ticketing just to use your miles. For a recent trip, we had to pay $175 each way ($350 per person) and then the $25 or $35 agent assistance fee (but it was so worth it when booking for two people using FF miles...just to make sure you actually get on the same plane).

And, while I am not in charge of the AA miles program, we seem to get special offers to buy miles "all the time" from the various airlines.

Another way to log up a lot of miles is to do your shopping thru them. They offer a bunch of on-line merchants....my sister and her family rack up gobs of miles that way. So, if you buy the LandsEnd or some other merchant, just click on the AA shopping program, which takes you to that site, and then you rack up miles for all you buy. That's also a good way to keep activity on your FF account, so miles don't expire from lack of activity, if you have miles at several airlines.

I've been looking at possible mileage tickets to/from Continental Europe in 2016 and availability is limited and if transiting London Heathrow Aiport (LHR) the additional charge was about $300USD/ticket. Be careful!

I went on AA.com and looked at flights using miles for a March 16 flight. None of the flights that came up using the mileage are flights that I can book not using miles. Some even fly back to LA California. Pretty much answered my question with that and all the comments above. One of the credit card ads on TV even mention that the flights you want are never available using miles. When I used my miles for the last flight over, I called the airline on the first day available to book the flight I wanted. Think it was 8 months out but did get the plane and schedule I wanted.. Not willing to do that again. Guess if I needed a few thousand miles to get a free flight it might be worth it but not for a full fare ticket.
Thanks for all the great comments and help.

Not A Deal.

Tony,

Although I am a loyal AAdvantage member, I can’t recommend purchasing miles. If you want to build up your account balance, there are other ways to do it. Hotel and rental car often let you earn airline miles. AAdvantage also has dining and shopping networks that earn you miles. It’s surprising how fast you can increase your miles balance when shopping online for things you were planning on purchasing anyway.

However, purchasing miles, especially if you aren’t uber-elite, just isn’t worth it in my opinion. The selection of award fares is totally dependent on your AAdvantage membership level – the higher your elite level, the more award fare options you get and the better the award deals are. I generally earn Gold every year (but rarely earn Platinum) and I can tell you that being Gold doesn’t get you much these days…

Before you purchase miles, test out a couple dream “reward” trips on their web site. Determine just how much that trip to London or Rome is going to cost you in miles and fees. Don’t stop at just looking at the award category screen; go all the way through picking your flights and determining the added fees that will apply.

A few things to remember with AAdvantage awards:

• Lower miles award levels generally involve convoluted and undesirable itineraries.

• Lowest miles award flights overseas ALWAYS are code-share partners. This results in the applicable fee being twice to three times what an American flight would be because the EU forces the Airlines to collect VAT on the value of the award ticket. An example – DFW to London on AA Flight 50/51 (in coach) has fees of less than $200 while the codeshare operated by BA has fees of almost $500.

• The lower mileage award categories for coach tickets don’t allow you to reserve Main Cabin Extra or Preferred seats – you must select the highest mileage award level in order to qualify for those seats.

Given the above, I generally use my miles only for domestic travel where the payoff is much greater. But then again, this is just my opinion and others may feel differently.

Oh, and a word on "upgrades."

I know some people, myself included, take advantage of mileage programs as a way of flying business class. The reason why miles are a good value is because a typical international biz class ticket to Europe (I'm in the San Francisco area) runs anywhere from $4K to $8K depending on the carrier, the route, and the date. While most would not actually purchase this ticket with dollars, it can, however, be purchased with roughly ~100K miles (excluding tax/fee, which can be a hundred or so dollars).

To upgrade to biz class using miles, however, involves a little more money and luck. For one, you can only use miles to upgrade from economy to biz if you've purchased a "full fare" economy ticket. Most of us do not purchase full fare tickets as they are much more expensive. The prices that pop up on TripAdvisor and any one of the online booking agents are the "discounted fares" and not "full fares" (i.e., "$660 RT, San Francisco to London!"). These same flights on a full fare cost, would run more than $1500 or even $2000. Second, once you've purchased this full fare economy ticket, you can only upgrade IF there are seats available for upgrading on the flight you've purchased. So even though upgrading requires less miles than a straight purchase (I think it's about 50K miles to upgrade), it becomes a bit of an expensive gamble and the total cash out of your pocket is higher because of the need to purchase a full fare ticket (assuming that you earn miles as part of a credit card mileage program or through your flights, in other words, you're earning miles as part of usual expenses and you're not buying miles).

I agree that buying miles this far in advance is risky. First, the flights you want and a price you want may not be available. Second, and more dangerous in my opinion, is the fact that the airlines can devalue your miles at will. Today's 50,000 mile award suddenly requires 65,000 miles, and there is nothing you can do about it. You have NO guarantee what your miles will be worth two months from now, much less two years from now.

If I ever bought miles it would be because I was just a bit short of getting a good flight, so I might need 500, 1000, or 2000 miles to get the 'free' flight or 'free' upgrade. But, that's about it. Or, if the extra miles allowed me to get status as one of the 'anointed' flyers. :-) But, watch that, not all miles qualify towards being anointed.

There are lots of ways to get miles. I just picked up 30 miles when I bought a Groupon last month. Another 100 points for filling out a questionnaire. Sure, that is not much, but the cost is zero. Years ago, I got 100 miles for every $250 I spent at a grocery store. It all adds up. Just not very fast.

I currently use a credit card that gives me cash back. They can't devalue the dollars once I have them in my pocket.

...I also put all my bulk expenses on my credit card, including all my insurance payments and even my property tax. There is a 1.5% fee for using your credit card to pay for your property tax here in Alameda County, CA, but on a $3000-$4000 property tax, that's only $45-$60 for 3000-4000 miles for something you need to pay for anyway. Too bad we can't use our credit card to pay for our mortgage, otherwise, that free flight would come much quicker.

Tony, I fly AA and one world alliance a lot and I frequently take advantage of their miles sales. I like to fly business overseas and I agree with your logic. Taxes aside, you pay about 50 percent of the normal cost of a business class ticket. On One World Alliance partners, in general, taxes have not been crazy (with the exception of British Airways). Taxes on AA are usually 100-ish each way from Chicago. I had a flight on Air Berlin where additional taxes were FIVE dollars, if you can believe it.

So far, it has been worth it for me. Policies can always change or they can make it harder to redeem miles. But that has not been my experience so far.