American Airlines is changing how updates with miles work. Unfortunately, according to our first glance, this seems to be a devaluation in most cases.
Similar to what United announced a few weeks ago for its programThe American Airlines mileage update awards will also disappear.
On the other hand, it is being replaced with instant updates, already available for many reservations, which you can buy when your itinerary is fined.
American has been offering cash update offers for some time.
Fort Worth headquarters with headquarters told TPG: “Aadvantage members who use thousands no longer need to wait to see if the milage update they requested will be confirmed before the exit.”
Now, when you see the offer, you will also have a price on miles.
You can still use the awards lists to update, according to the AA.com website, until August 11. That awards list had been a potentially good way to update flights for only 5,000 miles from American Airlines Aadvantage.
“With the launch of the Instant Update with thousands, the new requests that use the Millajo Update Awards list will no longer be accepted from August 12, 2025 to the CT of midnight,” said American.
Related: How much should you pay for a first class update?
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While it is good to be able to update instantly using miles, we are seeing values of approximately a penny per mile … very similar to the value you will get to buy updates in Delta Air Lines With Skymiles Delta. Our calculations show that Delta updates are usually sold for approximately 1.07 cents per mile.
On that next flight to Chicago, I can update my trip for $ 291 or 27,100 miles of Aadvantage, which is not a great return to the miles of American Aadvantage.
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New offer of update in flight to Chicago. Aa.com
Nick Ewen from TPG obtained an update offer of $ 76 or 7,100 miles on an upcoming flight. Once again, it is not a great value per redeemed mile since TPG values the miles of the Americans to 1.5 cents each of June 2025 valuations.
The good news is that these changes do not affect Update awards for the entire system. You can still use an update throughout the system to change a paid rate to the next class of service (or even two classes in some itineraries) unidirectional for up to three segments.
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For those who want to squeeze the maximum value of their miles of Aadvantage to get into a better seat, this will be a difficult pill.
It is especially painful if you are used to using its American miles for relatively cheap mileage improvements on international flights. Personally, I have been able to use only 25,000 Miles AA and a co -payment of $ 350 in cash to update from economy to executive class on flights to Europe, which will not be possible after August 11.
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