American Airlines put out its Q1 transatlantic travel promotion a little while back but I’ve just now noticed. Shame on me, I suppose, but it turns out that it doesn’t matter too much for me as this year’s version is a far cry from what the company has offered in prior years.
Earn bonus miles for your American Airlines-marketed transatlantic flights this quarter, but not as many nor as easily as in previous years.
Offer applies only to AAdvantage® members who purchase eligible published-fare tickets and register between January 19, 2017 and March 31, 2017. Tickets purchased before January 19, 2017 or after March 31, 2017 are not eligible to earn bonus miles for this promotion.
Includes First Class fares booked in F or A; Business Class fares booked in J, R, D or I; Select Economy Class fares booked in Y, H, K, M, L, W, V, G, Q, N, O or S on American marketed flights.
Historically some cheaper economy fares received only 2,000 points so the 5,000 point option there is nice. In other versions business and first class received 25,000 points, not the 10-20,000 here. Most surprising to me, however, is that the promotion is only valid on AA-marketed flights (at least it included those operated by all four JV partners). Historically these TATL promotions have been coordinated across all the JV/ATI TATL partners. That meant buying from and flying on any of them would count towards the promotion and one could earn the bonus miles in the loyalty program of all the JV/ATI members. Perhaps the writing was on the wall when British Airways launched its network-wide bonus promo recently and partners were excluded there as well.
Either way, it raises questions about the future of coordination amongst the programs for such offers. That was one very nice “feature” of the oneworld partners for the past few years. It would be a shame if it disappeared completely.
Still worth registering (Promo code NAS17), but go in with tempered expectations.
Header image: AA tails lined up at LAX in January 2017
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