Starting for the 2023 qualification year, AAdvantage qualification is based on how many AAdvantage base miles you earn, which count as what’s called Loyalty Points. It doesn’t matter how many segments or miles you actually fly; it essentially only matters how many miles you earn, which is essentially a function of how much you spend.
So far, I’ve earned just under 45,000 Loyalty Points this year. To requalify for AAdvantage Platinum, I’d need to earn an additional 30,000 LPs by February 28, 2023. There’s not much time to earn this, and I have a lot more points to go before I can even requalify. So, how am I going to do it?
Earning Loyalty Points on the ground
It turns out there’s a bunch of ways to earn Loyalty Points beyond flying on American Airlines or their partner airlines.
Other ways include:
- Earning miles by making purchases on AAdvantage credit cards
- SimplyMiles
- AAdvantage eShopping
- AAdvantage Dining
- BookAAHotels.com
- Rocketmiles
There are more ways, but the above are the most commonly used methods.
It turns out the best way to earn efficiently among the above methods is to use Rocketmiles, and that’s what I’ll be using to reach my requalification threshold.
How I’ll earn 80% of the remaining miles via Rocketmiles
I’ve planned on doing a quick 3-night stay, where I’ll take a 4 day retreat. For this retreat, I’ll be staying at a nice Hilton Garden Inn with nightly prices that are reasonable for the area. For a total of $760, I’ll be getting 3 nights plus 18,000 AAdvantage base miles. That puts me already 60% through my remaining miles I need.
Earning the rest of the miles
The remaining points will be earned through another Rocketmiles stay earning a more modest 6,000 AAdvantage miles, as well as enough flights that should cover the remaining 6,000 miles I need. I expect to requalify for Platinum after my February 8 trip on Alaska Airlines.
Take a look at my below calculations on an Excel sheet I made, powered by a bunch of VLOOKUP and IF functions:
That’s right: I expect to barely requalify with only 1,803 Loyalty Points over the threshold. That’s cutting it a bit close, but if my calculations are off by a lot, I’ll be booking a mattress run on Rocketmiles as soon as possible in order to get to 75,000 Loyalty Points by February 28.