They made one further change, this time relating to the cost of transferring miles to another AAdvantage member. Surprisingly, the change is a positive one that could mean it’ll make sense to transfer miles in the future rather than buy them.
There’s a minimum transfer amount of 1,000 AAdvantage miles, while it maxes out at 200,000 miles. You’re allowed to transfer up to 200,000 miles per year or receive up to that amount per year.
Transfers used to cost 1.5cpp (cents per point) which represented very poor value because buying miles doesn’t tend to cost much more than that. Paying that high fee to transfer existing miles therefore made very little sense.
The change that American Airlines has made is that the fee has been slashed to 0.5cpp – a reduction of two-thirds. While that’s more than some other airline loyalty programs that offer family pooling for free (e.g. British Airways Avios), it does mean that transferring existing miles from one account to another could be worth it in some circumstances rather than buying miles.
With the other changes that were announced yesterday, I speculated that Delta and United might follow American’s lead in increasing checked baggage fees and only awarding miles to those who book directly in the future. Both those airlines charge similar fees to what American Airlines used to charge; Delta charges 1cpp plus a $30 fee to transfer, while United charges 1.5cpp plus a $30 fee. While it would be nice to think that they’ll follow American’s lead with reduced transfer costs, I doubt they’ll feel as much pressure to make a change such as this. That’s because I imagine that frequent flyers looking to transfer their miles are far less numerous than the number of people who check bags or book their flights through OTAs. I’d be more than happy to be proven wrong though.
https://frequentmiler.com/author/stephenp/
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