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I like to say that more ways to use your miles are always a good thing. However, that's not entirely true, as evidenced by American Airlines' latest announcement. You can now use your American Airlines AAdvantage miles to purchase gift cards through a dedicated gift card platform.
Here's what you need to know about this new redemption method, including why you should avoid it.
Redeem Miles for Gift Cards Through AAdvantage Gift Cards
The AAdvantage Gift Cards platform is officially live, giving AAdvantage members the option to redeem miles for gift cards across a variety of merchants. At first glance, this seems like a potentially rewarding option. You can purchase gift cards for merchants that typically don't accept points and miles as payment, such as Airbnb. However, whenever you dig into the fine print, you realize that this isn't a rewarding option at all.
At the time of writing, there were 195 gift cards available through the AAdvantage Gift Cards platform across the following categories:
- Apparel and accessories (54 available)
- Digital entertainment (16 available)
- Fast casual and food delivery (14 available)
- Home stores (27 available)
- Kids (9 available)
- Multi-merchant (12 available)
- Recreation and travel (27 available)
- Restaurants and dining (30 available)
- Wellness and beauty (6 available)
Let's take a look at the average value you'll get from your AAdvantage miles if you choose to redeem them for gift cards. Since you can't use points and miles for Airbnb stays (without jumping through a few hoops), you might choose to use miles to buy an Airbnb gift card. A $25 Airbnb gift card will cost 5,000 AAdvantage miles, giving you a valuation of half a cent per point.
For context, AwardWallet users have recently redeemed AAdvantage miles at 2.56¢ apiece, on average. At this valuation, 5,000 miles would be worth $128 — substantially more than a $25 gift card.
All this said, the math changes if you have American Airlines elite status and an AAdvantage credit card. For instance, one of our team members is an Executive Platinum member (and credit card holder), and that same $25 Airbnb gift card is available to him for 3,570 miles. That's nearly 30% fewer miles and offers a redemption value of roughly 0.7 cents apiece.
That still doesn't make this a high value redemption. But if you fly (and spend) a lot and have more miles than you know what to do with, you'll benefit incrementally more from redeeming this way as a status holder than you would without status or a co-brand credit card.
Ultimately, it's up to you how you choose to redeem your miles. However, would you rather use 100,000 AAdvantage miles to take advantage of one of American Airlines' sweet spots to book a business class seat on a long-haul flight, or potentially use the same number of miles to get a $500 Amazon gift card? For most people, the choice is clear.
Related: You Can Redeem American Airlines Miles for Items Through the AAdvantage Exchange — But Please Don’t
Bottom Line
Unfortunately, it doesn't matter which gift card you choose — you'll get a terrible valuation of your miles with every option. The only time this redemption method makes sense is if you have a ton of AAdvantage miles stranded in your account and you know for a fact that you won't fly American Airlines or book a vacation package through American Airlines ever again. If you want to squeeze as much value from your miles as possible, it's best to stay away from the AAdvantage Gift Cards portal.
