
American Airlines credit card benefits include bonus miles on AA flights, 25% off in-flight food and beverage purchases, and rental car insurance. Those benefits are provided on all cards. Other benefits vary from card to card, including free checked bags, priority boarding, travel insurance, initial bonuses and airport lounge access.
Best American Airlines cards annual fee
American Airlines credit card annual fees range from $0 to $450. The more expensive a card is, the more benefits it tends to provide.
Best American Airlines cards for bad credit
There are no American Airlines credit cards for bad credit, unfortunately. There are a few airline cards for bad credit in general, though.
American Airlines’ merger with US Airways spawned nine different American Airlines credit cards, in addition to creating the world’s largest airline. There are five American Airlines Aviator cards issued by Barclays, plus four offers from Citi. But you can only apply for two of the Barclays versions. The others are replacements for people who previously had US Airways cards.
Still, deciding whether to keep or cancel an existing credit card account is just as important as picking a new offer to apply for. So we chose the best of the bunch currently accepting applications to help you determine whether an upgrade is in order. We also compared all nine offers to clarify their overall hierarchy.
Best American Airlines Credit Cards Compared
Credit Card | Best For | Two-Year Net Rewards Value* | Min. Credit Required |
American Airlines AAdvantage® Aviator™ Business Credit Card | Business | $7,085 | Good |
CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® Mastercard® | Business Bonus | $6,828 | Excellent |
Citi® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® World Elite Mastercard® | Light Spenders | $1,886 | Excellent |
American Airlines AAdvantage® Aviator™ Red Credit Card | Initial Bonus | $1,510 | Good |
American Airlines AAdvantage MileUp℠ Card | No Annual Fee & Rewards | $1,332 | Excellent |
Citi® / AAdvantage® Executive World Elite Mastercard® | Lounge Access | $808 | Excellent |
In addition, there are a few more American Airlines credit cards that are no longer available to new applicants: the American Airlines AAdvantage® Aviator™ Credit Card, the American Airlines AAdvantage® Aviator™ Blue Credit Card, and the American Airlines AAdvantage® Aviator™ Silver Credit Card.
If you would like a personalized credit card recommendation, just sign up for a free WalletHub account. There are lots of birds in the sky, so to speak. And by not shopping around, you could end up missing out on a free flight or two per year.
How Much Are AAdvantage Miles Worth?
One AAdvantage mile is worth 1.37 cents, on average, when redeemed for an American Airlines flight. That means 10,000 AAdvantage miles are worth roughly $137 in airfare. Ironically, you get more value from American Airlines miles when flying internationally.
For example, 10,000 miles are worth:
- $133.90 in domestic airfare
- $140.70 in international airfare
In case you’re wondering, WalletHub arrived at these values by comparing the number of miles required to book American Airlines award flights with the dollar cost of those same flights quoted on Kayak.com. We compared short-, medium- and long-range roundtrip flights between the largest U.S. cities and popular travel destinations both foreign and domestic. And we did so for trips during different times of the year.
Methodology
To identify the best American Airlines credit cards, WalletHub’s editors regularly compare 1,500+ credit card offers based on their airfare rewards, frequent flyer perks, fees and approval requirements.
In doing so, we focus on how much cardholders would save on American Airlines airfare over two years of use, based on consumer spending data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. For example, we include a card’s initial rewards bonus in our calculations if a cardholder would earn it by spending an average of $700 per month for up to four months. And for our heavy-spender category (10X the average person's airfare spending), we double the expected spending.
This provides a level playing field on which to evaluate cards with different types of rewards and fee structures. And it ultimately allows WalletHub’s editors to select the best American Airlines credit cards for different types of potential applicants.