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The United and Southwest shopping portals both launched promotions last week that are running for several weeks. They’ve now been joined by the American Airlines and Delta shopping portals running similar three-tiered spending offers.
The Deals
- American Airlines shopping portal:
- Spend $200 & earn 400 bonus AAdvantage miles
- Spend $600 & earn 1,000 bonus AAdvantage miles
- Spend $1,200 & earn 2,500 bonus AAdvantage miles
- Direct link to offer
- Expires August 8, 2026
- Delta shopping portal:
- Spend $100 & earn 300 bonus SkyMiles
- Spend $400 & earn 1,200 bonus SkyMiles
- Spend $600 & earn 2,000 bonus SkyMiles
- Direct link to offer
- Expires August 10, 2026.
Key Terms
- Terms below are for the American Airlines shopping portal
- During the “Back-to-School Bonus” offer, which runs from 7/20/2026 through 8/8/2026 at 11:59:59 pm ET (the “Bonus Period”), Member will earn a one-time bonus of up to 2,500 AAdvantage miles on qualifying purchases, in addition to the base AAdvantage miles earned from shopping online through the AAdvantage eShopping mall.
- This one-time bonus award will be determined based on Member’s cumulative qualifying purchases made during the Bonus Period using one of the following tiers: Tier 1 bonus: 400 bonus miles for qualifying purchases of at least $200; Tier 2 bonus: 1,000 bonus miles for qualifying purchases of $600; or Tier 3 bonus: 2,500 bonus miles for qualifying purchases of $1,200 or more.
- “Qualifying purchases” do not include returns, cancellations, shipping and handling, taxes, gift card or other cash equivalent purchases, and certain products that are not eligible for bonus miles. Please see the AAdvantage eShopping mall site for details on product eligibility and other restrictions.
- Please allow up to 10 weeks after the Bonus Period for bonus miles to post to your AAdvantage eShopping account.
- The Tier 3 bonus provides the maximum number of miles that will be awarded.
Quick Thoughts
Neither of these new bonuses are quite as rewarding as the United and Southwest promos. Those other two bonuses give an opportunity to earn an effective 4X-5X bonus miles/points, whereas the American Airlines portal barely awards 2X, while the best you can do with the Delta portal is an effective bonus 3X.
Still, it’s nice to have more portal offers like these than fewer, especially because some people prefer to focus on earning miles/points with a particular airline.
Both the American and Delta portals have a card-linked in-store offer feature. Spending at those brick and mortar stores counts towards these spending thresholds, so that makes it easier to earn the bonus miles seeing as you don’t have to rely solely on online shopping.
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It’s frustrating when American doesn’t expressly say whether those types of bonuses include Loyalty Points. Generally, bonus miles do not count for LP, but there are different rules with AA shopping
These bonuses don’t include a corresponding number of Loyalty Points I’m afraid. The miles you earn from the spending do (e.g. if you earn 6X miles shopping through the portal, you’ll also receive 6X Loyalty Points), but you won’t earn 400, 1,000, or 2,500 bonus Loyalty Points from this latest promotion.
Yep, which is why these “bonus bonuses” are mostly meaningless. Better than nothing I guess, but the idea of spending $1,200 to earn an extra ~$35 in miles with no LP… not worth it, but if you end up getting a bonus because other spending makes sense, terrific.
@ Eric – as you know, the rule of thumb: Base miles earn LP. Bonus miles do not earn LP.
Not really different rules with AA eshopping. If you see the word bonus, no LP. The real trick is to identify stores you shop at and set alerts for those stores with whatever portal or point tracking service you use. For instance yesterday Adidas and Nike were at 10x miles on AA’s portal. So, spend $100 and earn 1,000 base miles and LP. Even better if you are in the 25% LP partner bonus (unlocked when registering within 30 days after you hit 60k LP) you’re then earning 1,000 base miles and 1,250 LP on a $100 purchase. If you value AA miles at 1.4cpm you’re getting $14 back on that in the form of miles, plus a good chunk of LP – it’s pretty good!
AA’s SimplyMiles does the best at expressly stating that you’re earning miles + LP, but you have to click through to look at the details because most offers have a cap. So it might say Earn 9 miles + Loyalty Points for $X spend, but then if you click the details, it will say Maximum of 1,000 miles + LP or whatever.
AA Hotels earns base miles/LP, but they will try to upsell you to pick a rate that includes bonus miles. Those bonus miles do not earn LP. Likewise if you pay with an AA Executive card that earns 10x on AA Hotels spend, that’s 1x base mile and 9x bonus miles. So if you have $1,000 of spend the AA Exec card gives you 10,000 miles total (1,000 base and 9,000 bonus) but only 1,000 LP.