American Airlines deletes AAdvantage accounts
American Airlines has sent out emails informing people that their AAdvantage frequent flyer accounts will be closed – unless they have any activity within the next month.
These are not the usual emails saying “your miles are expiring.” And I’ve gotten several questions about what’s going on. In fact, in some cases people don’t even recognize the account numbers and wonder if it’s a mistake or some kind of phishing scam. It’s not.
Here is an example:
We’ve detected that your AAdvantage® account is inactive and has no award miles. It may close if you don’t take action by September 25, 2024. To keep it active, use your AAdvantage® account by booking a flight with us or earning at least 1 AAdvantage® mile.
Book now >
Earn now >We appreciate your trust over the past years and hope to see you again soon.
Terms and Conditions
- To prevent your AAdvantage® account from being closed, you must log in to your AAdvantage® account no later than September 25, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. CDT.
- To interact with your AAdvantage® account, you can:
- Book and book a ticket for a flight offered and operated by American Airlines or
- Earn AAdvantage® miles with American Airlines or one of our partners.
- Booked flights can have any future departure date, including departure dates after September 25, 2024, as long as your AAdvantage® number is provided at the time of booking, the flight is marketed and operated by American Airlines, and the reservation is ticketed and remains active.
- To earn AAdvantage® miles, you must complete the flight or partner transaction no later than September 25, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. CDT and the earned miles must be posted to your account no later than October 25, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. CDT.
- The AAdvantage® program terms and conditions apply to all members.
For customers aged 21 and over, miles expire after 24 months of no account activity. However, this is not normal mileage expiration, but rather account deactivation. In some cases, these are accounts that have not had any activity for many years.
It seems that American is essentially deleting long dormant accounts. Usually, accounts are kept open because it’s cheap. They might as well keep targeting customers who rarely or never use the program. Plus, everyone likes inflated membership numbers. When programs share how many members they have, it’s never about “active members” (e.g., any activity in the last 24 months), it’s always about “how many database entries do we have.”
I never expect to close an account, but who cares? If you have an account that’s been dormant for years and you want to do something with AAdvantage at some point, just create a new account. You’ll just lose your “member since” date. I even lost my original AAdvantage account that I opened 35 years ago. I let my miles expire in 1992, which is a shame because I had almost 20,000 back then. And now my join date is only 28 years ago.
Some members opened secondary accounts years ago without realizing it. So the account number in the email doesn’t match their known AAdvantage number. The miles expired years ago. The account they used is active! And that’s confusing until they realize the account numbers don’t match. Then it looks like a scam email (“that’s not my account number, it must be a hacker!”). In fact, it’s just a database cleanup.
