With a co-branded credit card, you may enjoy many of the perks of basic membership in an airline's frequent flyer program, even if you need to fly more frequently to qualify for that status.

Preferential boarding, free checked bags for you and up to four traveling companions on the same reservation, and a discount on in-flight purchases are just some of the perks that come with the AAdvantage Mastercard.

In addition, you may earn double miles on transactions with American Airlines and normal points on anything else you buy with the card. Among the many travel protections offered by this card are provisions for trip cancellation and interruption, delayed luggage, and vehicle accident damage waiver.

AAdvantage Red Global Elite Mastercard from Barclay's Rewards Program

Obtaining Incentives

When you use the Barclays AAdvantage Aviator Red Global Elite Mastercard for any transaction, you will earn two miles for every dollar spent on American Airlines purchases. For all other purchases, you will receive one mile.

Just rounding up your purchases to the next dollar will get you one mile toward your AAdvantage membership at a rate of one mile for every two cents if you participate in Flight Cents. There are typically pricing available that are lower than this one.

A welcome bonus of 60,000 miles is being offered by the Barclays AAdvantage Mastercard* for the final time. This benefit is awarded to new cardholders who make their first purchase during the first 90 days of account opening.

Rewards Redemption

To book a flight using your AAdvantage miles, visit American Airlines, log in to your account, and click the "Redeem Miles" checkbox when booking your travel. The reward chart for American Airlines is available online, making it simple to calculate how many miles would be needed for a given route.

A round-trip economy-class MileSAAver ticket within the contiguous 48 states and Canada costs only 25,000 miles plus taxes and fees. Only an extra 5,000 miles round trip will get you to Mexico. With the sign-up bonus, you may buy a round-trip ticket in economy class on the MileSAAver program between the United States and Europe. A free plane ticket to Europe requires only one transaction and a yearly charge.

Benefits Potential

For the sake of our calculations, we have assumed that a single business owner has a certain level of revenue. The yearly income of households in the 70th percentile, which has wage-earning members, is $116,000, and their credit-card-able expenses total $36,177.

You may use these statistics to obtain a general sense of the potential rewards of using a credit card. If all of their travel is booked through American Airlines, our fictitious family would spend $2,443 per year on flights and earn 4,886 miles annually if these figures are accurate according to estimations provided by Forbes Advisor.

The remaining $33,734 in qualifying yearly expenses for this family would earn another 33,734 miles, bringing their current yearly mileage earnings to 38,620 miles courtesy of the welcome bonus and the first year's spending. Those miles may be redeemed for free airline tickets.

Methods for Getting the Most Out of Your Investments

Based on valuation of a mile at 2.04 cents, the value of your rewards might be comparable to, or even greater than, what you'd get from, for example, a cash-back card that yields 4 cents for every dollar spent.

Unlike a cash-back card, where the rewards may be redeemed for any transaction, this card's points can only be used to make purchases in the United States.

You may maximize the value of your points and cash by being mindful of the total cost of your travel redemption and exploring other flight times if your itinerary is changeable.

Our Verdict

With a substantial introductory bonus of 50,000 miles and a fantastic mileage value of 2.04 cents, the Gold Delta SkyMiles card is comparable to the United Explorer MileagePlus card in terms of value. Because of the rather large amount that must be spent to satisfy the annual charge, this card is only available to genuine Americana fans for the first year. If you use an other credit card, you can make the same or more purchases and still earn the same or greater rewards than if you used an American credit card to make those transactions. You can save time and money using a different credit card.