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American Airlines reduced-mileage awards offer discounts for 160+ travel destinations through March 2020

  • Meghan Hunter

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    If you have an eligible American Airlines credit card, like the CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® Mastercard® or Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard®, you can book reduced-mileage award flights. Your discount depends on which card you use and how far you fly.

    You’ll get a discount of up to 7,500 American Airlines miles on round-trip flights over 500 miles each way and a discount of up to 2,000 miles on round-trip flights of 500 miles or less each way.

    This perk reduces the price of a round-trip flight that’s under 500 miles each way to 13,000 miles and for a round-trip flight that’s over 500 miles each way to 17,500 miles. These discounts are currently available to 160+ airports, including many smaller destinations. This list changes frequently, so sign up for our newsletter to be notified when there are updates.

    Read on to find out if you’re eligible, how many miles you can save and how you can book a flight.

    The information for the Citi AAdvantage Platinum and CitiBusiness AAdvantage Platinum card has been collected independently by Million Mile Secrets. The card details on this page have not been reviewed or provided by the card issuer.

    Use American Airlines reduced-mileage awards to book discounted flights to Charleston, South Carolina, this winter. (Photo by Sean Pavone/Shutterstock)

    What are American Airlines reduced-mileage awards and who is eligible?

    Mileage discounts are available for coach, business class and first class on American Airlines flights, but you need certain American Airlines credit cards to be eligible.

    The discount varies, depending on which card you have and the flight distance. American Airlines normally charges 12,500 miles for a one-way saver award flight that is 500+ miles and they charge 7,500 miles for a one-way saver award flight that is 500 miles or less.

    The following cards will give you a 7,500-mile discount round-trip if your flight is 500+ miles per one-way nonstop segment. If you book a round-trip flight of 500 miles or less per one-way nonstop segment, you’ll receive only a 2,000-mile discount:

    Which cities are eligible for AA reduced mileage awards?

    You can book the discounted awards if:

    or

    As long as your originating or destination airports are on the list for the month you want to travel, you’ll get the discount if there are available saver-award seats.

    The American Airlines website doesn’t clearly state that the discount is available to or from cities on the list, but many Million Mile Secrets team members have booked discounted awards this way.

    This is the current list of cities:

    How to book American Airlines reduced-mileage awards 

    So you have an eligible credit card and you’ve verified that your flight destination is available for reduced mileage awards. Now we get to actually booking the flight.

    Once you’ve found available saver-award seats on the American Airlines website, you’ll have to call American Airlines reservations at 800-882-8880. You can’t book reduced mileage-award tickets online, so you should request that phone booking fees be waived.

    You’ll have to provide the agent with the correct discount code for your flight:

    Flights over 500 miles

    For flights within the U.S. and more than 500 miles, the discount award codes are:

    First class
    Business class
    Coach

    Flights 500 miles or less

    For flights within the U.S. of 500 miles or less, the discount award codes are:

    First class
    Coach

    Note: If you are booking travel within 21 days of departure, you will have to pay a $75 fee. The fee is waived for American Airlines status members with AAdvantage Executive Platinum, Platinum Pro, Platinum, and for Gold members who are using miles from their account for award flights.

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    Editorial Note: We're the Million Mile Secrets team. And we're proud of our content, opinions and analysis, and of our reader's comments. These haven’t been reviewed, approved or endorsed by any of the airlines, hotels, or credit card issuers which we often write about. And that’s just how we like it! :)