How to Earn 86,000 Miles in the Next Few Weeks

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Citi® Platinum Select® / AAdvantage® World MasterCard®

• Earn 30,000 American Airlines AAdvantage® bonus miles after $1,000 in purchases in the first 3 months of cardmembership*
• Your first eligible checked bag is free*
• Group 1 boarding and 25% savings on eligible in-flight purchases*
• Earn a $100 American Airlines Flight Discount every cardmembership year with qualifying purchases and cardmembership renewal*
• Double AAdvantage® miles on eligible American Airlines purchases*
• Earn 10% of your redeemed AAdvantage® miles back – up to 10,000 AAdvantage® miles each calendar year*

Just a few months ago I wrote a post for newbies called How to Earn 105,000 Miles in the Next Few Weeks.

The post was an introduction to miles-earning credit cards through the best deal at the time: opening two personal American Airlines credit cards at the same time and getting 50,000 miles from each. That deal is now doubly dead.

You can no longer be approved for two Citi cards on the same day–not even one personal and one business–and there are no more 50,000 mile offers for Citi AAdvantage cards.

The new current best offer is to combine a 40,000 Citi® Platinum Select® / AAdvantage® World MasterCard® with an application for the identical business card the next day.

The Citi® Platinum Select® / AAdvantage® World MasterCard® comes with my favorite feature by far of any airline credit card. While you’re a cardholder you’ll get a 10% miles rebate on all your American Airlines award redemptions up to 10,000 miles rebated per calendar year.

That means that if you booked a roundtrip business class award to Europe with your American Airlines miles while you were a cardholder, you’d get 10,000 miles back for a total cost of only 90,000 miles roundtrip!

If you open both the personal and business card and redeem the 86,000 miles this year, that’s another 8,600 miles rebated because of this benefit.

The benefit is automatic, no enrollment necessary. Here’s my experience with the rebate last year.

I value the 10,000 extra miles a year at about $170, so this is a huge ongoing benefit to me and one reason that I hold a Citi AA card. This is in addition to a free checked bag when flying American, priority boarding, a discount on in-flight purchases, and double miles on American Airlines purchases.

The card has no annual fee the first 12 months, then $95 thereafter.

The rest of the card’s features are:

Citi® Platinum Select® / AAdvantage® World MasterCard®

• For a limited time, Earn 40,000 American Airlines AAdvantage® bonus miles after $3,000 in purchases within the first 3 months of cardmembership*
• Your first eligible checked bag is free*
• Priority Boarding with Group 1 privileges* and 25% savings on eligible in-flight purchases*
• Earn a $100 American Airlines Flight Discount every cardmembership year with qualifying purchases and cardmembership renewal*
• Double AAdvantage® miles on eligible American Airlines purchases*
• Earn 10% of your redeemed AAdvantage® miles back – up to 10,000 AAdvantage(R) miles each calendar year*

The Business Card

The best business card offer is also 40,000 bonus miles after spending $3k in three months. The main difference with the personal card offer is that the business card offer doesn’t have a landing page where you can verify the benefits, but the benefits are basically the same including no annual fee the first 12 months, then $95 thereafter.

Instead the business card offer is being relayed by FlyerTalk members who have applied for the card in the last few weeks and reported the terms of the offer relayed to them by a Citi customer service agent upon activating their new card.

If you are comfortable applying for a card with no landing page–I am, I just applied for this card–then the application link is here: Citi Business AAdvantage Card.

If you aren’t comfortable applying for a card with no landing page or want a lower minimum spending requirement, there is an offer for 30k American Airlines miles after spending $1k in three months here: CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® World MasterCard®

How to Get the Personal and Business Card

Citi realized people were getting two personal AA cards at once, and “over-closed” that loophole. You can now no longer get two Citi cards the same day, not even one personal and one business card.

To get a personal and business AA card, apply for the personal card today and the business card tomorrow. Make sure the applications are at least 24 hours apart, maybe 36 hours to be safe.

Other than the delay between applications, handle the application process normally. That means if you don’t get instant approval on a card, call Citi’s reconsideration line to see if you can speed up approval. Here’s a video of a call to Citi’s reconsideration line to show how easy that is. Here’s the number of Citi’s reconsideration line:

Citi 800-695-5171

What Can You Do with 86,000 American Airlines Miles?

1) 80,000 miles are enough for a roundtrip from the US to Europe with one direction in business class. If you haven’t flown business class, you have several options with fully flat beds. I wrote about American’s Los Angeles to London route featuring flat beds in business class here.

2) 60,000 miles is enough for a roundtrip from the US to Northern South America in business class. That means you can fly to Peru both directions in fully flat beds on the newest commercial airplane (787 Dreamliner) on American Airlines-partner LAN Airlines. I talked more about this here.

3) 67,500 miles is enough to fly oneway from the US to anywhere in Asia in First Class on Cathay Pacific, which is considered by many to be the best first class experience in the world.

4) 90,000 miles is enough for a roundtrip from the US to anywhere in the world in economy on American Airlines and its partners. South America is as little as 35k roundtrip, Europe 40k roundtrip, Asia 50k roundtrip, Africa and Australia 75k roundtrip, and the Middle East and India 90k roundtrip. For the full chart, see here.

American has good partner availability to hard to reach places like Tahiti, the Maldives, Easter Island, Fiji, and more.

5) 75,000 miles is enough for two roundtrips from anywhere in the US to Hawaii.

Recap

You can earn 86,000 American Airlines miles in the next few weeks by:

1. Applying for the Citi AA personal card.
2. Applying for the Citi AA business card 24-36 hours later.
3. Meeting the $3k minimum spending requirement per card.

Once you have the cards, you can enjoy the 10% rebate on the miles needed for AAdvantage awards up to 10k miles per calendar year and other benefits like a free checked bag and priority boarding.