WannaTheater

As another data point, and having booked this exact award for Oct ‘24, this ticket would cost ~6500USD if purchased directly through Japan Airlines.

notquiteaff

Is there a thread (or blog) providing historical data points? Some blogs seemed to say this was the best bonus in 2023.

I have never bought miles speculatively, only to top off some account when making an actual purchase or to keep miles/points alive. Minimal expense in those case. But I am somewhat tempted at the moment to buy some AA miles without having an actual award in mind. Two weeks ago I was sitting on nearly 400k miles. And then I came across QR J availability to some beautiful Indian Ocean island - and 300k of my AA miles went into two J round trips. So now I am down to 90k miles… which is not enough to book much if some great deal comes up. I do still have a ton of BA miles and some AS miles, but for the QR seats those would awards would have been a lot more expensive. So I guess what I am weighing is the risk of a near term devaluation vs. not being able to buy more miles with a good bonus when (if!) I need them.

AJNEDC

Ah IC

Cledaybuck

Then I wouldn’t buy them.

Gaucho100K

I apologize in advance for the probably very silly question - but will ask anyway....

Does anybody know if these AA miles purchases qualify as valid AA spend for 2X and 4X mileage Bonuses that apply when you use a the Citibank AA Mastercard credit cards....?

If this is the case, then the all-inclusive cost per mile does go down a little further than the 1.7 - 1.8 cents per mile Im seeing posted here.

Cledaybuck

I don't know that specifically, but I can tell you that the charge was from American Airlines and did get me 7X's on my Aspire when I bought some this past spring.

AlastairGordon

I was planning on taking advantage of this offer as I often seem to be able to redeem miles at a much better rate than the 1.7 cents or so they are selling for here. For example, Sydney to JFK on March 15 is $7220 in J, $12158 in F (for flights AA 72 and 4) and the mileage cost would be 276K and 286K, each with a copay of $83.30, equating to 2.6 cents per mile and 4.3 cents per mile respectively. And in the past I have been able to redeem at better than a 10 cents per mile equivalent, again between SYD and New York. Does this seem reasonable or am I missing something here?

WannaTheater

I think your analysis is solid. The consensus here seems to be if you are planning some trips in the near future, and the seats are available, this could be a good deal. But if the thinking is "I may need SYD-JFK in 3 years when my kids graduate from college and we have time to travel," then this probably would not be the best thing to do.

VegasGambler

It depends on your current balance and how frequently you redeem.

2-3c redemptions are commonplace on AA metal (including domestic) and much higher is possible on partner awards.

If you are regularly redeeming miles I think it makes sense to buy some at a good price if you are getting low. I mentioned it earlier in the thread but I would not buy any if you have more than a 1 year supply.

When calculating redemption values I would not use international 1 way fares since they are overpriced compared to RTs. Unless you really really need a one way it doesn't make sense; you would book a RT when paying cash.

Also don't forget to add in the miles that you are not earning by buying the ticket. So say a ticket is $5k before taxes and you are EXP, that would earn 55k miles. So you need to add 55k to the cost of the award ticket. And of course there are the 55k LP as well, which may be important depending where you are in terms of status qual.

moondog

ANA J is $4071 for SYD-JFK, with only a slightly longer duration than AA, on March 15, so this is a more suitable value for your numerator in the business class case. This amounts to 1.475 cpm, based on your 276k denominator, even without accounting for the miles you would earn on the revenue ticket.

F for only 10k additional miles, on the other hand, does ostensibly yield a much better return. But, for me, the $7k-12k cash value is a somewhat meaningless number because I couldn't fathom actually spending that much money on AA F.

notquiteaff

I thought about it some more, and decide to instead apply for the Aviator Red card, to earn 75k miles for $99. Combined with my current account balance of 90k miles that gives me a reasonable buffer (160k miles plus whatever I earn on an ongoing basis) when/if a special deal materializes. Instead of buying miles speculatively, I also need to work on using our BA and AS stockpiles, even if using them may not result it an optimal award cost.

VegasGambler

I assume that you heard about the massive incoming AS devaluation? If not there is info on the blogs and a thread if the AS forum. The TL;DR version is book before March (travel any time) before they go to a distance-based chart that basically has no real value anywhere. It is definitely optimal to burn them now.

And, so, AA stands alone as the only domestic carrier with a good partner award chart. I'm not usually overly paranoid about devaluations, but I'm definitely booking future partner travel more aggressively than usual.

moondog

I disagree with your conclusion. While the distance based award chart certainly constitutes a devaluation, 75k for US-Asia (5k-7k mile distance band) in business is still a much better deal than 200-450k AA miles.

VegasGambler

Not really a fair comparison. 200k-450k is available on every flight. That 75k on AS requires partner saver space. If there's partner saver space you can book it for 60k AA miles (assuming it's a OW partner). So the correct comparison is 75k vs 60k.

Now do the comparison for JL F in the sub-10k band. We all want to try the new product out of JFK right? 110k vs 80k?

moondog

I learned in the JL awards thread that 60k applies to Japan/Korea, whereas the rest of East Asia is 70k...not so different from 75k. Furthermore, I assume that AA will continue to make some saver inventory available to AS (i.e. the partnership thing is a two-way street), which means, when it exists, you will see it for AS's fixed levels, instead of AA's pseudo-dynamic levels (e.g. PVG-DFW has had tons of excess capacity recently, but I've never seen the price in miles drop much below 200k in business class).

Yes, 80k is substantially better than 110k, and I will try to snag seats on those flights with AA miles, assuming there aren't devaluations between now and when they are bookable.