How to use the American Airlines shopping portal to earn miles and elite status at the same time

The American Airlines AAdvantage eshopping portal works similarly to other online shopping portals such as Rakuten. But instead of earning cash back or points, you earn AAdvantage miles and Loyalty Points. You can use the American Airlines shopping portal through its website or you can download the browser extension, which will then notify you whenever you’re shopping on a website where you can earn rewards.

You can redeem AAdvantage miles for award flights, upgrades, lounge passes and other experiences. The Loyalty Points you earn don’t have redemption value, but instead move you up the elite status track. When you earn a mile, you’ll typically also earn one Loyalty Point. Right now, you need to accumulate 40,000 Loyalty Points before reaching AAdvantage Gold®, the lowest tier of elite status.

After you set up an account, you can browse the shopping portal for deals at 1,200+ stores. When you find a deal you like, a click on the offer will redirect you to the merchant’s site to complete your transaction. You typically either receive bonus miles per dollar or a big chunk of miles for making a purchase that meets specific requirements. For example, right now you can earn 2X miles per dollar spent at Kohl’s, and new Blue Apron customers can earn 2,000 bonus miles with an eligible subscription.

Before purchasing anything through the American Airlines shopping portal, be sure to enable cookies in your browser. If you don’t do this, American Airlines won’t be able to track the purchase and you’ll miss out on the bonus miles. You’ll also have to avoid using any promo codes not found on the AAdvantage eshopping site when you check out. Using an ineligible discount code could prevent you from collecting your bonus miles and Loyalty Points.

Although you can’t use outside promo codes when you’re making purchases through the American Airlines shopping portal, you can take advantage of card-linked offers.

Most of the major card issuers have deals you can add to your card to earn bonus rewards or to receive cash back. Since the card issuer applies these offers after you make an eligible purchase, they won’t invalidate any bonus you earn through a shopping portal. This means one purchase can earn you rewards from three different sources: your card, the shopping portal, and a card-linked offer.

And if you have a Mastercard, you may be able to stack an additional earning opportunity on top of those three. The AAdvantage SimplyMiles site allows you to add card-linked offers to any Mastercard you add to your SimplyMiles profile.

Here’s a real-world example available at the time of this writing. Let’s say you want to get a pair of Allbirds shoes for $135. You can make the purchase through the AAdvantage shopping portal (3X miles) with a Citi American Airlines AAdvantage® MileUp® Mastercard (1X miles), add an offer through SimplyMiles for an additional 3X miles and add a Citi offer for $10 off a $75+ purchase. As long as you add the card-linked Citi and SimplyMiles offers first, here’s what you would earn:

• 405 miles from the American Airlines shopping portal
• 135 miles from your AAdvantage MileUp card
• 405 miles from the SimplyMiles offer
• $10 back from the Citi offer

In this scenario, you earn 7X miles (and Loyalty Points) on the purchase and get $10 back.

By stacking deals you can supercharge your path to elite status with American Airlines and earn miles for award flights at the same time.

With every American Airlines mile you earn (outside of credit card welcome bonuses), you’ll also earn a Loyalty Point that counts toward earning elite status. This includes the miles you earn from purchases you make with a co-branded American Airlines credit card and bonus miles you receive from the AAdvantage eshopping portal or card-linked offers.

*Underwritten by AMEX Assurance Company. Please visit americanexpress.com/benefitsguide for more details.