Wait for your flight in style with a full Admirals Club lounge membership
The heart of this card is the complimentary Admirals Club airport lounge membership. Full membership gets you into almost 50 Admirals Club locations, as well as another 50-plus partner lounges around the world. Lounges offer lots of seating, free food, free booze, and (usually) line-free bathrooms.
Your membership also lets you bring your immediate family (partner and kids under 18) or up to two guests. (Members must be present and guests must have a same-day boarding pass for a oneworld airline.)
As noted above, the cost to buy a membership outright is a whopping $850, and single-day passes will run you $79 a pop. If you travel alone, that makes eight day passes to get your annual fee back. If you travel with your partner, four visits as a pair will make the card the better value.
It's really nice to see something hefty on a card with a price tag this high. The current welcome bonus gives you 100,000 AAdvantage miles when you spend $10,000 in the first three months.
Yes, that spending requirement is high. But if you're flying often enough to need the lounge access to pay for this card, you can probably reach that requirement without ruining your budget. In numbers, it's about $3,333 a month, which is in the realm of doable for most potential cardholders, I think.
In terms of value, consider this: Business class tickets from the east coast to Europe can be found for 54,000 miles one-way. So the welcome bonus, plus the points you accrue while you try to earn it, would be round-trip business class to Europe. The same trip would cost upward of $3,000 if you paid cash.
Get free flights faster with 4X the miles on AA purchases
If you spend a lot of money specifically on American Airlines purchases, this could be a good card for turning that spend into more miles. None of the major travel rewards programs transfer to American Airlines. Other than flying, this card is the fastest way I know to earn AA miles.
Specifically, cardholders earn 4X miles per $1 on American Airlines purchases. You can also boost that rate to 5x miles per $1 after you spend $150,000 on your card in a calendar year. (Most cards reduce your rate when you spend a certain amount, so this is refreshing!)
This is twice the rate of other AA cobranded cards even before the boost. It's also comparable to what you'd get on flights from most of the other top travel rewards cards.
Help pay your fee with up to $360 back in partner statement credits
Partner credits is the current fad in rewards cards, and it's even leaking into cobranded ones. In this case, cardholders can earn three credits totalling up to $360 a year:
- Up to $120 a year back on eligible Avis and Budget rental car purchases
- Up to $10 a month back on Grubhub purchases
- Take three eligible Lyft rides in a month and get a $10 Lyft credit (one credit per month)
It's not hard to imagine an easy use case for the first credit for folks who fly a lot. And the second credit could be handy if you live in or travel to cities with good pickup options. The last credit is only really useful if you're taking at least four rides a month.
Reach AAdvantage status faster with Loyalty Points and bonuses
American Airlines's elite program runs on Loyalty Points. You can earn those Loyalty Points by flying -- or by making purchases with your AAdvantage card. AA words it a bit oddly, but essentially you get 1 Loyalty Point for every net $1 in card purchases.
Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard® cardholders also get two exclusive Loyalty Points bonuses, the first is 10,000 Loyalty Points after earning 50,000 Loyalty Points. Then, if you earn 90,000 Loyalty Points (in the same calendar year), you'll get an additional 10,000 Loyalty Points. (Max of 20,000 Loyalty Points in one qualifying year.)
It takes 40,000 Loyalty Points to get to AAdvantage Gold status, which unlocks complimentary upgrades, priority boarding, and other perks. AAdvantage Executive Platinum status, the highest advertised benefits tier, requires 200,000 Loyalty Points.