Transfer American Airlines Miles For Free

Did Citi & American recently create a totally unnecessary and cumbersome AAdvantage Business account that has confused new cardholders for months? Yes, 100% yes! Did that system open up one of the best airline card perks available because of it? Yes, 100% yes! That is because you can transfer American Airlines for free with the Citi AAdvantage Business card and the AAdvantage Business account. Is it so good that miles earned by the Citi AAdvantage business card are now the most powerful airline mile on the market? That is taking it too far, but they ARE the best American Airlines mile you can have at your disposal!

What Is The AAdvantage Business Account

Several months back Ben wrote up a guide on how to find your lost American Airlines business card miles because there were so many posts about it in the ToP Facebook Group. If you need help on setting up your account, and locating your newly minted business card American Airline miles, then be sure to check out that step by step guide.

While you don't need the credit card to have an AAdvantage Business account, having one does eliminate the requirements to have an account. Here are what you would need to do otherwise:

• You must do each of the following in order to be eligible for the program:
  • Spend $5,000 on American Airlines flights over 12 months; and
  • Have at least 5 travelers enrolled in order to use your miles.
• This requirement is waived for Citi AAdvantage business card holders.

As for what the program is, it is essentially a new holding spot for your American Airlines miles earned with the business card. Your miles go to your AAdvantage Business account instead of your personal American Airlines loyalty account. As Ben showed you, it just requires a few clicks once set up to move the miles from your business account to your personal loyalty account. The real question with all of this is, should you? I am here to tell you that your American Airlines miles are never more valuable than when they are in your AAdvantage Business account.

Why Citi AAdvantage Business Card Miles Are The Most Valuable

While the miles are sitting in your AAdvantage Business account they actually have untapped potential. Similar to how flexible currencies have more value sitting in your account versus after you transfer them to a partner. Why? Because they have more possibilities.

Miles earned from your Citi AAdvantage Business Card go to your AAdvantage Business account which opens up opportunity. That is because you can transfer those miles to anyone's personal AAdvantage loyalty account that works for your business. And you can do it for free! That is right, this allows you free transfers to any of your employees. I am going to assume many business owners out there have their families on the payroll, meaning it is free transfers to family members. Maybe even friends if they work for you.

Why This Is A Big Deal

This would allow you to move miles earned from your business to an employees account that has better American Airlines status to take advantage of it while flying with them. It could unlock stranded miles in their account, assuming they fall short of a needed award. It is a way to move miles around to maximize their value, all without a fee. The limitations of it needing to be an employee is the downside, but I think enough people will find it useful that it was worth pointing out. Adding employees to your American Airlines account is super easy to do. You basically send them an email from your AAdvantage Business account and they accept the invite.

My Personal Experience

I wanted test this out before writing about, and see if it was really that easy to transfer American Airlines miles for free. I was able to quickly send my wife an invite as an employee of our business. She received the invitation email pretty much instantly and accepted the invite in the email and that was that.

Next up, I logged into my AAdvantage Business account (you can get there from your main account login outside of the app) and saw her added there. I decided to transfer her a few thousand miles to test it out.

As you can see on the right there, you just select transfer miles. This is how you do it if you are sending them to yourself, or to an employee. I selected my wife from the list and sent 3,000 miles.

It wasn't instant, at least not the first time, but the miles hit her account within a few minutes. I was essentially able to transfer miles from my American Airlines AAdvantage Business card account to my wife's American Airlines AAdvantage account without a fee. It should work the same way for any employee of your company.

What About If Your Spouse Has Their Own Business Card?

One thing I wasn't initially sure on when writing this guide, on how to transfer American Airlines miles for free, is what happens if your spouse has an account too? Can they be an employee on your account while also being a business owner on their account? When I read through the terms of the program it sounded like you could only be involved in one AAdvantage Business account. I figured that meant you couldn't be an employee in one account and an owner on another. Maybe it just meant you couldn't be an owner on more than one account?

However it is supposed to work, I am happy to say that you can be involved with more than one business account. I was able to add myself as an employee on my wife's AAdvantage Business account while having my owner account. She was also able to open up a business card without issue, and launch her own AAdvantage Business account, even though she was an employee on my AAdvantage Business account. We have been able to transfer miles back and forth without issue several times now.

Adding each other back and forth is easy and is the normal set up shown above. The only tricky thing is switching between your employee and owner accounts. That is located in the bottom left of your portal when logged into your AAdvantage Business account. Just click the three dots next to the business account name and you can switch between your companies.

Transfer American Airlines Miles For Free: ToP Thoughts

I initially thought this new AAdvantage Business account set up was another annoying and useless endeavor for us end users. When Ben first started writing about it I could only think about how pointless it all seemed. That is until I got my own Citi AAdvantage Business card and had a chance to play around with it a bit myself. Which led to my realization that it opened up a way to transfer American Airlines miles for free, at least to employees of your company. That is a pretty powerful perk of this card / new AAdvantage business account set up. Having the business card also makes it easier to rack up these transferrable miles, versus just having a standard AAdvantage Business account. It really is the best airline business card on the market now, at least in my opinion. Let me know what you think about the ability to transfer American Airlines miles for free over in the ToP Facebook Group.