American Airlines periodically releases what they call Citi® / AAdvantage® Reduced Mileage Awards. If you have one of the Citi AAdvantage credit cards (and if you don’t, why not?!?), you are eligible for up to 7500 miles off a round-trip ticket with one of these reduced mileage awards.
Where in the continental United States are these bungalows?!? Abilene, Texas maybe?
They release the list every other month, and the list is good for 4 months of travel. I read on Mommy Points that the list was just released for bookings in December and January, and you can travel in October, November, December, or January.
There is a list of destinations, and some cities are available all the months, and some only in certain months.
For the next 4 months (October – January), I counted 62(!) airports that are on the list all 4 months. So anyone based in any of these places can get a roundtrip to anywhere in the 48 continental states and Canada for only 15,750 miles!
How to book Reduced Mileage Awards
In order to book Citi / American Reduced Mileage Awards, you need to have one of the Citi / American co-branded credit cards. These 7 cards are eligible for the full 7,500 mile discount on a roundtrip
- Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World EliteTM MasterCard®
- Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® Visa®
- Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® MasterCard®
- Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® American Express®
- CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Select Visa®
- CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Select MasterCard®
- CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® MasterCard®
- AAdvantage® AviatorTM Silver World Elite MasterCard®
- AAdvantage® AviatorTM Red MasterCard®
- AAdvantage® AviatorTM Business MasterCard®
In addition, if you have one of the Citi / AAdvantage Gold or Aviator Blue cards, you can get a 5,000 mile discount.
To book reduced mileage awards, you will need to call the reservation desk at 800-882-8880. Because Reduced Mileage Awards are not bookable online, you will not be charged a phone booking fee.
(SEE ALSO: American now waiving phone fees on many of these award tickets)
Why Reduced Mileage Awards are so awesome
Here’s why American’s Reduced Mileage Awards are so great – as far as I know, this is THE cheapest way (miles and points wise) to get a domestic round-trip ticket, especially on longer flights. Let’s compare.
- British Airways Avios are the best for shorter distances. But if you don’t live in a oneworld hub, your destination options are limited. For example, living in Cincinnati as I do, I have 5 destinations that I can redeem for only 4,500 Avios (in red) and an additional two destinations that cost me 7,500 Avios one-way (in green). Of course if you live in a oneworld hub, you will have more destination flexibility.
- Flights on Southwest depend on the fares charged, and so vary quite a bit based on location and date, but sample fares I looked at for Dayton – Las Vegas were running about 12,000 miles one-way.
- Redemptions on most other airlines are going to be 12,500 miles one-way or 25,000 miles round-trip.
But wait! There’s more!
A domestic round-trip ticket for only 17,500 miles is a great deal, but don’t forget that with most of those AAdvantage cards, you ALSO get a 10% mileage rebate on your redemptions, making your net mileage cost only 15,750 miles! That is pretty close to unbeatable for longer redemptions – unless you’re booking 2 flights and have the Southwest Companion pass, perhaps.
I’m helping a family of 4 with tickets to Florida, and booking with a reduced mileage award would mean instead of 100,000 American AAdvantage miles, it would only be 63,000 miles. Of course if I can find direct flights to Miami, then they would be only 60,000 British Airways Avios roundtrip for 4 tickets.
Coupled with the fact that the reduced mileage awards work BOTH ways, so if you live in one of the featured destination cities, you can get a roundtrip to ANYWHERE (in the US and Canada), American’s Reduced Mileage awards are one of the best deals out there. I know they’re not as “sexy” as some of the other deals out there (like the Air France / KLM promo awards that offer cheap transatlantic redemptions like Chicago to Europe for only 12,500 miles one-way), but they also don’t come with any fuel surcharges! You’ll only pay the $11.20 “TSA” “security” “fee” (and thanks to the Congress-critters, that number won’t be going up… for now)
Have you used reduced mileage awards? How did it work out for you?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
So, this is no good if you have the Barclays Aviator?
Correct – I believe you have to have one of the cards listed in the post, according to American’s siteEDIT: As Will points out, the Silver, Red and Business Aviator cards do qualify for the 7500 mile rebate, and the Blue card is eligible for the 5000 mile rebate. I’ve updated the postThanks very much for the alert Dan — fabulous news indeed. Yet about the important question at hand, I’m reading three variations of the barclay’s Aviator card as also providing the 7500 mile discounts:
AAdvantage® AviatorTM Silver World Elite MasterCard®
AAdvantage® AviatorTM Red MasterCard®
AAdvantage® AviatorTM Business MasterCard®
source is directly from the AA promotion itself: https://www.aa.com/i18n/AAdvantage/redeemMiles/reduced-mileage-awards.jsp
I’m still sitting on an unused Aviator base level — this promo round might prompt me to do the upgrade to Aviator Red.
You are right! I copied the list of eligible cards from an old post and didn’t think to double check them now that they’ve converted the old US Airways Barclay cards into Aviator cards. I’ve updated the post