What’s the Value of American Airlines AAdvantage Miles? (Calculator)

American Airlines AAdvantage miles are worth about 1.3 cents each when booking award flights.

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Updated · 2 min read
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Written by 
Lead Writer
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Editor & Content Strategist
Nerdy takeaways
  • American Airlines miles are worth about 1.3 cents each when redeemed for economy award flights.

  • American Airlines has the second highest domestic airline valuation (closely following JetBlue).

  • Booking award flights far in advance yielded the best value in our analysis.

Nerdy takeaways
  • American Airlines miles are worth about 1.3 cents each when redeemed for economy award flights.

  • American Airlines has the second highest domestic airline valuation (closely following JetBlue).

  • Booking award flights far in advance yielded the best value in our analysis.

In the past few years, American Airlines has made a dizzying array of changes to its AAdvantage program. With new rules on how to earn and burn miles, it can be hard to know how much miles are worth now.

The short answer is this: American AAdvantage miles have a value of 1.3 cents each. This is a baseline value, drawn from real-world data on hundreds of main cabin routes, not a maximized value. In other words, you should aim for award redemptions that offer 1.3 cents or more in value from your American miles.

What does this value mean?

NerdWallet compared real-world prices to determine that each American mile is worth about 1.3 cents. You can use it as a point of reference when making your own bookings. If you’re getting more than 1.3 cents per mile for a given American redemption, you’re scoring above-average value.

How can you get more value? Start with the basics of redeeming American miles, then look for sweet spots and other optimizations. Generally, you’ll get more value by flying in premium cabins, especially with partner airlines (see “value when booking business class” below).

How to convert American miles to dollars (calculator)

Use this calculator to determine how much any number of American AAdvantage miles is worth, based on our valuation. This is useful for comparing the value of an award ticket to the cost of a cash ticket.

How do American miles compare to other airlines?

American miles offer slightly above-average value compared to other airlines.

Program

Point/mile value

1.2 cents.

1.3 cents.

1.2 cents.

1.4 cents.

1.3 cents.

1.2 cents.

When is the best time to use American miles?

Digging one level deeper, we can look at how the value of miles varies when used in different time frames. We compared four booking time frames and this is what we found:

Booking far in advance yielded the best value in our analysis. This doesn't mean booking last minute will never offer good redemptions, but it does mean that it may harder to find those high-value redemptions.

How has the value changed over time?

A few years ago, AAdvantage miles were worth only about 1 cent apiece. That value has increased significantly since.

How flexible are American miles?

American miles can be used to book flights on American, of course, as well as dozens of partner airlines (through AA.com directly, not by transferring to partners). They can also be leveraged to upgrade seats.

Watch out for other redemption options, like renting cars or booking vacation packages. Yes, these technically add versatility to your American miles, but they rarely offer decent value.

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Credit cards for earning American AAdvantage miles

AAdvantage offers flyers plenty of ways to earn miles via credit card spending:

American Airlines AAdvantage MileUp<sup>&#8480;</sup> Card
American Airlines AAdvantage® MileUp®
NerdWallet Rating
Apply now

on Citibank's application

Rates & Fees
Citibank AAdvantage Platinum Select MasterCard Credit Card
Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard®
NerdWallet Rating
Apply now

on Citibank's application

Rates & Fees
Citibank Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite™ MasterCard® Credit Card
Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard®
NerdWallet Rating
Apply now

on Citibank's application

Rates & Fees
AAdvantage® Aviator® Red World Elite Mastercard®
AAdvantage® Aviator® Red World Elite Mastercard®
NerdWallet Rating
Annual fee

$0.

$99, waived for the first 12 months.

$595.

$99.

Welcome offer

Earn 15,000 American Airlines AAdvantage® bonus miles after making $1,000 in purchases within the first 3 months of account opening.

For a limited time, earn 80,000 American Airlines AAdvantage® bonus miles after spending $3,500 in purchases within the first 4 months of account opening.

Earn 70,000 American Airlines AAdvantage® bonus miles after spending $7,000 within the first 3 months of account opening.

Earn 50,000 AAdvantage® bonus miles after making your first purchase and paying the $99 annual fee in full, both within the first 90 days.

Earn rate

• 2 miles per $1 at grocery stores, including grocery delivery services, and on eligible American Airlines purchases.

• 1 mile per $1 spent on other purchases.

• 1 Loyalty Point per 1 eligible AAdvantage® mile earned from purchases.

• 2 miles per $1 at gas stations and restaurants, and on eligible American Airlines purchases.

• 1 mile per $1 spent on other purchases.

• 1 Loyalty Point per 1 eligible AAdvantage® mile earned from purchases.

• 10 miles per $1 on eligible car rentals and hotels booked through AA.

• 4 miles per $1 on eligible American Airlines purchases (5 miles per $1 after spending $150,000 total on the card in a calendar year).

• 1 mile per $1 on everything else.

• 1 Loyalty Point per 1 eligible AAdvantage® mile earned from purchases.

• 2 miles per $1 on eligible American Airlines purchases.

• 1 mile per $1 on all other purchases.

• 1 Loyalty Point per 1 eligible AAdvantage® mile earned from purchases.

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How did we determine the value of American miles?

We analyzed the cash and points prices of 80 flights bookable with American Airlines miles across a range of domestic and international routes. A regular economy fare class was used for all pricing data to be able to compare the valuations of similar Main Cabin-type fares that are bookable with points or miles on other airlines.

Departure dates were selected at 15, 60, 90 and 180 days from the day of the analysis. Return dates were chosen eight days after the departure date. This process allowed us to analyze a wide combination of days of the week and not bias the data towards expensive (i.e. weekend) or cheaper (i.e. midweek) flights. We used the median value of the dataset as the average.

This method differs from others in that it looks at actual redemptions rather than hypothetical, maximized redemptions. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a real-world indication of how much these miles are worth under typical circumstances.


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