Here’s the latest Citi AAdvantage Reduced Mileage Awards
Back in June, Citi made a few changes to their AAdvantage Reduced Mileage Awards program. One tweak was that they started listing their AAdvantage Reduced Mileage Award destinations by the month instead of by the quarter, so now they’re providing an updated list every other month.
But the big change they made is that they now allow one-way Reduced Mileage Awards to or from any city on the list.
This means that you can redeem a one-way coach award for only 8,750 miles.
It also means that if you live in a city that’s on the list, then with these new one-way awards you can fly to any destination in the US and save miles.
Also, Citi AAdvantage Reduced Mileage awards also qualify for the 10% mileage rebate benefit (up to 10,000 miles annually) that comes with the Citi AAdvantage credit card.
So, with the right card it’s possible to book a one-way award for just 7,875 AAdvantage Miles!
Anyway, Citi just released a list of reduced mileage awards destinations for October and November. If you’re planning to use some of your AAdvantage miles to visit family during Thanksgiving, now is the time to book you awards.
When you search for availability, look for dates that offer MileSAAver awards – Reduced Mileage Awards come from the same inventory. When you find the flights you want, call AAdvantage reservations to redeem your award (unfortunately, unless you have Executive Platinum status or an AAirpass, there’s a $25 award service charge per person).
There are lots of great destinations: New York, D.C., Monterey, Santa Barbara, Santa Fe, New Orleans, and (my sentimental favorite) Oklahoma City.
Photo: Reduced 1970
Credit: Jacky Tranter on Flickr
Good to see ATL is consistently on the list!
Is there a close in time surcharge for these flights?
@ W – Unless you have elite status the Reduced Mileage Awards are subject to the $75 close in fee. 🙁
Can I rebook my award ticket – under the change rules – and ask for the discounted milage rate?
@ 3LeftTurns – No. That used to work but earlier this year the closed that loophole. 🙁
You mention that now is the time to book Thanksgiving trips. I am less familiar with these new changes, but I thought with the old quarterly schedule you had to both book and fly within the quarter. Now that they’ve gone monthly, can you book far in advance as long as you fly during the given month?
@ Matt – You can book a reduced mileage award to any published destination at any time, but the travel must happen during the month that the destination is offered.
For example, you can redeem an award to Santa Barbara now, but you have to travel to/from there in the month of October.
Thanks for reading!
You said, “… if you live in a city that’s on the list, then with these new one-way awards you can fly *TO* any destination in the US and save miles.” [emphasis mine]
I don’t believe that’s correct. You only get the “reduced miles” price if the city you’re going TO is on the list.
Example:
I live in PIA, which is on the list. If I want to go to LAX, I could book PIA-LAX and LAX-PIA as separate one-ways, but I would only get the reduced price on the LAX-PIA flight because it’s the only one going TO a city on the list. The outbound one-way would not be discounted because it’s going TO LAX, which is not on the list.
Perhaps that’s what you meant, but I didn’t want anyone living in one of the cities on the list to get the wrong idea. You cannot “fly TO any destination in the US and save miles. You can, however, “fly back FROM any destination…”
Small difference, but you’d only save 3,750 miles, not the full 7,500. I’m happy to be wrong on this, but since one-way reduced price redemptions are new, we’ll have to wait for someone to report actual experience.
I just called AA – the number provided in the reduced mileage award page and they claim that the award code TD8X7A expired on July 30th and so even though they released the October and November dates just a few days ago they won’t be able to use that award code. It must be that they forgot to update the award code. Anyone knows the new award code?
Thanks!
@ Maribel – I reached out to someone on the AAdvantage team. Hope to have an answer for you tomorrow.
After 3 calls to AA. I got the ticket with the reduced mileage. They had to get some sort of approval because the code was “expired.” Anyways, I waited patiently and got it.
Thanks for reaching out to them as well.
Maribel
@ Maribel – Glad it worked out and thanks for the update. Still hope to get an answer from the AAdvantage team about the proper code. Thanks for sharing your experience!
So is it TO or FROM any destination on the list? Or is it only TO?