Citi American Airlines AAdvantage Executive Card: 100K miles after $10K in purchases (last call)

Update 9/4/23: Last call on this offer. If you’ve been on the fence, now’s the time.

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As we expected and discussed on the podcast this past weekend, the Citi American Airlines AAdvantage Executive card has launched with a new intro bonus today of 100,000 miles after $10K in purchases in the first 3 months. It has also launched with a new structure both in terms of the annual fee and cost to add authorized users as well as category bonuses and ancillary benefits. The card looks a little bit better than I gave it credit for, but I think this will still likely appeal most to those who yearn for Admirals Club access and the Loyalty Point boosts.

The Offer & Key Card Details

Card Offer and Details

Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard® ⓘ $196 1st Yr Value Estimate 70K miles ⓘ Affiliate 70K miles after $7,000 spend in first 3 months $595 Annual Fee FM Mini Review: Good choice for those who need Admirals Club® access and those who value the Loyalty Points boosts at 50K and 90K Loyalty Points earned. Plus, it offers the usual collection of perks for flying AA (free checked bag, priority boarding, etc.) and some handy credits for Avis or Budget rentals and GrubHub. Earning rate: 4X AA ✦ 10X hotels booked through AA.com/Hotels ✦ 10X car rentals booked through AA.com/Cars ✦ 1X everywhere else Base: 1X (1.3%) Brand: 4X (5.2%) Other: 10X (13%) Card Info: Mastercard World Elite issued by Citi. This card has no foreign currency conversion fees. Noteworthy perks: ✦ First Checked Bag Free ✦ Admirals Club® access for both primary and authorized users ✦ Up to $120 in statement credits per calendar year for car rentals booked directly with Avis or Budget ✦ Up to $120 per 12 monthly billing cycles for GrubHub purchases (up to $10 per monthly billing cycle) ✦ $10 monthly Lyft credit after you take 3 Lyft rides that calendar month ✦ 10K bonus Loyaty Points after earning 50K Loyalty points through all channels and another 10K bonus Loyalty Points after earning 90K Loyalty Points through all channels ✦ 25% savings on eligible in-flight purchases on American Airlines flights ✦ Up to $100 Global Entry or TSA PreCheck application fee credit ➥More

Quick Thoughts

The initial bonus on this card is a large sum of miles that could easily get you a one-way ticket in business class on a partner airline to almost any region of the world. That said, I mentioned over the weekend that I don’t feel like it is wildly compelling given that we just recently saw a 70K offer on the Barclays Aviator Red card after first purchase (now expired), so paying the $595 annual fee and only ending up with 100K miles doesn’t draw me in on its own.

However, the main attraction here is of course the Admirals Club lounge access. The primary cardholder gets access to Admirals Clubs. Unfortunately, authorized users are no longer free and have in fact become quite expensive at $175 for the first 3 authorized users and then $175 for each authorized user thereafter. That stands in stark contrast to the prior structure of the card. Still, if you frequently use Admirals Club lounges, the cost could still be worth it — but it is wildly more expensive than it previous was if that is your only reason for carrying the card.

However, the card launches a few new key benefits that may be of interest.

For starters, there is now a rental car benefit that sounds broadly useful: get up to $120 in statement credits each calendar year for car rentals booked directly with Avis or Budget . That’s great since it means that you should be able to use any corporate codes that you’re eligible to use so long as you book directly with Avis/Budget. Furthermore, I bolded the words “calendar year” to be clear that you could double up and get this credit twice in your first cardmember year. In other words, you could get the card now and use the credit for a rental car next week and then you could use the benefit again in January, getting up to $240 in statement credits before your next annual fee comes due.

The card also features a monthly $10 credit for GrubHub purchases, which will be useful to some and not at all for others. I don’t get very excited about GrubHub statement credits simply because GrubHub doesn’t exist in my nearby area, but if I lived in a city where I passed by a place where I might want to place a GrubHub pick up order once a month, I’d surely feel differently.

There’s also a Lyft benefit, though it isn’t as generous as it sounds. It gets billed as “up to $120 in Lyft ride credits”, but that’s a $10 Lyft credit after you take 3 qualifying rides in a month. All Mastercard World and World Elitecardholders can get a $5 Lyft credit after 3 Lyft rides in a month, so the AAdvantage Exexutive card is only adding another $5 to that. This benefit seems kind of gimmicky to me in that you have to make sure that you use Lyft frequently in order to get the credit and then you also have to forgo the chance to earn better rewards with a different card.

Citi has upped the ante a bit with 4x on American Airlines purchases, which is a nice bump that Greg noted might make the card worth using instead of a transferable currency card that would earn 3x points. You can also get 10x for hotels booked at AA.com/hotels, which might make sense when you don’t care about elite credit or benefits, and you’ll get 10x for cars booked at AA.com/Cars, but I imagine that you’ll rarely get a competitive price on a car rental through that portal.

Those chasing elite status will enjoy the bumps in Loyalty Points: with this card, you’ll get 10,000 bonus Loyalty Points after you earn 50,000 Loyalty Points (from all sources combined) in an elite status year and 10,000 after you earn 90,000 Loyalty Points. You could presumably earn all of those Loyalty Points through the shopping portal without ever using the Executive card at all and you’d still qualify for those 10K Loyalty Point bonuses just by virtue of having the card.

It is that focus on keeping you engaged within the American Airlines ecosystem rather than focusing on spend on the card that I find most interesting. Clearly, American Airlines has decided that they want to encourage you to collect American Airlines miles and Loyalty Points in all of the ways available, which in turn likely keeps you more loyal to American Airlines. I think it is an interesting strategy that runs counter to the trend of finding ways to trap your spend on a card that is otherwise unideal as has been the case for some cards with other issuers.

Overall, I still suspect that this card will be a good fit for some, though it won’t be a good fit for those who got it primarily for the cheap access to Admirals Club lounges for a group of people. That’ll no longer be cheap, but if you value the other parts and pieces, this offer could still be intriguing.

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