American Airlines AAdvantage miles expire 24 months after you earn them unless there’s some activity in your account. Luckily, you can reset the expiration date by either earning or redeeming miles, which means that there are dozens of ways to keep your miles fresh for your next award flight.
Here are some of the ways you can keep your AAdvantage miles from expiring:
Use a Co-Branded Credit Card
Shop
Nearly all of the airline frequent flyer programs offer an online shopping portal. Simply log in, search for the merchant where you’d like to shop and click through to the online store. You’ll earn a certain number of miles per dollar spent at that merchant, and that activity will reset the clock on the expiration of your miles. Visit American’s AAdvantage eShopping Mall or shop through these links for FTD, 1-800-Flowers or Vinesse.
Grab a Bite to Eat
If you dine out, you can earn AAdvantage miles for every dollar you spend at select restaurants through the AAdvantage Dining Program. Sign up now and miles earned this way will reset the expiration date on your account.
Fly
You’ll earn AAdvantage miles anytime you fly on American, and that will reset your account. You can also earn AAdvantage miles when you fly on any oneworld alliance member airline or any of American’s individual partners, such as Air Tahiti Nui, Alaska Airlines, Cape Air, Etihad, Fiji Airways, Hawaiian Airlines and Malaysia Airlines. Just make sure you select the correct frequent flyer program to earn rewards when booking your ticket.
Drive
Likewise, you can earn miles for renting a car from Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Hertz, National, Payless or Thrifty. Partners can offer savings on base rates of your rental as well as miles earnings per rental, rental day, or for every dollar spent.
Stay
You can earn miles by staying at thousands of hotels around the world that are owned by various hotel chains like Starwood, Marriott, Hilton and others. Review all your options and make sure to credit your stay to your AAdvantage account.
Book an American Airlines Vacation or Cruise Package
You can also earn AAdvantage miles for booking a vacation or cruise through American Airlines Vacations or American Airlines Cruises.
Donate
You can donate your miles to Stand Up To Cancer to keep them from expiring. Only donations of $25 or more earn miles. AAdvantage® members can also earn miles by donating miles and cash to those in need.
Buy, Gift or Share Miles
Anytime you buy, share or gift AAdvantage miles, your account’s expiration date will reset. You can buy as few as 1,000 miles for $29.50 plus a $2.21 Federal excise tax. The processing fee for the purchase of miles is $0. This is not a cost effective method of resetting your mile expiration date so use this option as a last resort.
All of these methods of earning miles will reset the expiration date of your AAdvantage account. Don’t forget that any time you redeem miles, that activity will also reset your account. Every single mile is precious, so keep tabs on the date of your last activity and don’t accidentally lose miles.
As a last resort, you can pay to have your lost miles reinstated. AAdvantage charges $200 to reactivate 1 to 50,000 miles, $400 for 50,001 to 75,000 miles and $600 for more than 75,000 expired miles.