Should Nick upgrade to the Aviator Silver card?

About 3 months ago, my wife and I opened American Airlines AAdvantage Aviator Red cards. We’d both had the card before and closed them years ago. We were both instantly approved again and received our welcome bonuses soon after opening our accounts last fall. Recently, we’ve both been targeted with offers in our Barclays logins to upgrade our Aviator Red cards to the Aviator Silver card. The Aviator Silver card is only available as an upgrade from an Aviator Red card and Greg has said that it is the best American Airlines credit card. Given the opportunity to upgrade so soon, should either of us do it?

Aviator Silver card key details & benefits

The Barclays Aviator Silver card is officially available “by invitation only”. Some cardholders eventually see an offer within their login to upgrade to the Silver card (this might be under the heading “offers” in the menu near the top or you may find it sort of in a frame on the sides of the screen when logged in to your account on desktop).

I’ve also seen numerous reports of people who were able to upgrade to the Silver card simply by calling Barclays and requesting the upgrade.

The key reasons to be interested in this card over the Aviator Red (which you need to have first in order to have the chance to upgrade) are:

• It offers an extra 5K Loyalty Points at each of the following spending thresholds: $20K, $40K, $50K.
• Earn a Companion Certificate good for up two companions at $99 each plus taxes after $20K cardmember year spend
• $25 per day food & beverage credit
• $50 WiFi credit per cardmember year

The card otherwise offers similar benefits to the Aviator Red (free checked bag for you and your companions on the same reservation, priority boarding, etc).

Why consider upgrading?

The Aviator Silver card comes with double the annual fee of the Aviator Red card. Is it worth another hundred bucks for the benefits noted at the end of the previous section? In my case, I’m considering it for several reasons.

First, I have quite a bit of spend coming up over the next few months. While I have cards that offer a more rewarding return than 1 American Airlines mile per dollar spent, I have enough spend that I want to spread it over multiple cards / issuers, so as it is I’ve already been putting some spend on my Aviator Red card and will likely continue to do so (It is also worth adding that I both value American Airlines miles and I enjoy the chase for elite status without flying). I was probably already going to spend my way to at least the Companion Certificate level ($20K spend). With the Aviator Red card, that $20K spend would get me a Companion ticket good for one companion for $99 + taxes. With the Aviator Silver, I’d get two companions for $99 each plus taxes. I’d also get a bonus 5,000 Loyalty Points after $20K spend (and again at $40K and $50K spend if I continued to spend on the card).

While the Aviator Silver has an ongoing $199 annual fee, I’ve learned from reading up a bit at Flyertalk that when you upgrade, the benefits start with next statement period….but the increased $199 annual fee isn’t charged until next anniversary. That actually makes some sense. I was initially surprised by the upgrade offer; due to wording in the CARD Act about not increasing your card’s fees in the first year, most issuers will not allow an upgrade to a more expensive card until you’ve passed your one year anniversary. I therefore thought the chance to upgrade after having only had the Aviator Red for ~3 months was surprising, but now it makes sense: they aren’t increasing the fee until next anniversary (presumably in order to stay compliant, but they don’t want to deny you the chance to lock in that higher fee for future years).

Since I opened the card in October, that means I would get the Silver-level benefits for the next ~8 months for free. Based on my reading, the ideal timing for an upgrade is right after your annual fee posts in order to essentially get most of a year of Silver benefits for the cost of the Red card. My timing for an upgrade wouldn’t be perfect, though eight months of the Silver card for the $99 I paid for the Red still might not be bad.

I’m further intrigued by the possibility of extending my elite status given the spend that I will have in the coming months. I’ve had American Airlines Platinum Pro status for the past few months thanks to the targeted (and long ago expired) Hyatt Globalist / American Airlines instant status pass of last fall. I need 42,000 Loyalty Points by February 1st to keep my Platinum Pro status until June 1, 2024. If I’m able to eke that out (which is indeed still an if at this point, more on that in a future post), I’ll have status until June 1st. If I want to extend that another 4 months to October, I’ll need to earn another 42K Loyalty Points by June 1st.

To be clear, I don’t really need American Airlines elite status. In large part, I’m just enjoying the thrill of the hunt. That said, I’m hoping that once I re-up my Platinum Pro status, I’ll be able to match to Turkish Miles & Smiles Elite status in short order for Star Alliance Gold benefits for a coming trip (and then I’ll hopefully be able to extend that Star Alliance Gold status for two years as that status would be much more useful to me). I like to play games like that, so having elite status can be helpful in situations which have nothing to do with actually flying American Airlines but everything to do with having elite status in general.

If I decided to continue to pursue my Platinum Pro status for a few more months, getting 5K Loyalty Point bonuses at $20K spend and $40K spend would shorten the path on that.

My questions

As I considered this plan, I had a couple of questions that I thought would influence my decision:

• When you upgrade to the Aviator Silver card, does your anniversary date change and is the new annual fee pro-rated or charged in full or how is that handled? As indicated above, my reading on Flyertalk indicates that the Aviator Silver fee is not charged until next anniversary, so there would be no immediate impact apart from gaining the benefits starting with my next statement cycle.
• Are the Companion Certificates useful? The jury is still out on this. My first instinct was that two $99 companion certificates would likely be very useful since domestic airfares have gotten so expensive, though we tend to mostly fly Southwest Airlines domestically (where we have the infinitely-repeatable Companion Pass). Still, I’d think that we’d stand to save enough with a couple of AA Companion Certificates that it would be worth choosing AA for a trip, but I keep reading comments from those who have these certificates about how highly restrictive they are in that there are apparently a pretty wide set of blackout dates. I am therefore uncertain whether we’d be able to use the Companion Certificates, particularly now that we’re at least somewhat beholden to the school schedule, and that has me somewhat hesitant. Balancing that hesitation some is the fact that I was probably already going to put $20K spend on my Aviator Red card and get a Companion Certificate anyway. Based on what I’ve read now, maybe I wouldn’t have found a use for that Companion Certificate, but I guess better to have two companions than one if I’m going to do the spend anyway?
• Does spend I’ve already done on the Aviator Red count toward the benefits at $20K cardmember year spend if I upgrade? This was my biggest question and according to Flyertalk the answer is yes. I’ve already put about $8K in purchases on my Aviator Red card since opening it. Therefore, if I upgrade to the Aviator Silver, the next $12K spend (which will bring me to $20K cardmember year spend) would yield an extra 5K Loyalty Points and an extra Companion Certificate beyond what I was planning to get with the Aviator Red (since I likely would have hit $20K spend anyway).
• Are the onboard food & beverage credits useful? At first glance, $25 per day in statement credits for food & beverage purchases on American Airlines sounds pretty good, particularly as a parent traveling with young kids (you can never have enough snacks for travel days). I don’t actually fly American Airlines very often, but we would likely take at least one family trip on American this year if we end up with a couple of companion certificates. I’ve seen comments indicating that American doesn’t often have food and beverage for purchase on domestic flights. I wouldn’t be looking to use the credits on alcoholic drinks but rather on snacks. Would this end up being useful? I’m skeptical.
• Is the $50 cardmember year WiFi credit useful? I almost always get the WiFi and get work done while I’m flying. However, I have T-Mobile Magenta Max, which gets me free in-flight WiFi for the entire flight on many American Airlines flights. It is therefore hard to know how useful this credit will be: there’s a decent chance that I’ll have access to free WiFi, but I’ve also taken a few American Airlines flights over the past year where I didn’t get free WiFi (I think it depends on the WiFi provider and AA doesn’t have the same one for all flights). I wouldn’t place any value on this in advance but could rather only really figure out what it’s worth in hindsight (which works out OK since I don’t need to pay the annual fee until next renewal).

For me, the key question was whether the $8K spend I’ve done since October would count toward the benefits at $20K spend. Since I’m almost halfway there, I think that the chance to get an extra Companion Certificate and an extra 5K Loyalty Points makes it worth accepting a free-for-now upgrade.

Would I keep the Aviator Silver long-term for $199? I think I’d only keep it long-term if I either intended to put $20K spend on the card and I thought the extra Companion Certificate and 5K Loyalty Points at $20K spend was worth more than $199 (the additional $100 I’d pay in annual fee + the $99 cost of the companion seat) or if I were flying American Airlines often enough that I thought I’d get regular use out of the WiFi and food & beverage credits. I’m not sure about either of those things, but I look forward to getting a couple of Companion Certificates so I can test them out and write about whether or not I think they are worth chasing.

Bottom line

I was surprised to get an upgrade offer to switch from the Aviator Red card to the Aviator Silver after less than 4 months of having the Red card. At first glance, I didn’t think I was interested in locking in a higher annual fee right now. However, when I dug in to how the upgrade works, I found that I won’t have the pay the new annual fee until next renewal and the spend I’ve already done should count toward the big spend bonus thresholds on the Aviator Silver card. That combination is enough to make me think that I should accept this upgrade offer. I’m a little concerned that the Companion Certificates won’t be as useful as I’d hope, but in my case that will make for what I hope is a useful story either way from a blog standpoint, so I’m leaning toward accepting the offer to upgrade my card. Not mentioned so far in this post though is that my wife’s card has already seen $11K spend this cardmember year — should we be upgrading her card, too? Hmm…..

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