Is the American Airlines credit card a good deal or just a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Here’s what you need to know before you apply.

Remember when it used to only cost two or three hundred dollars for a domestic round trip ticket? Not anymore! As we all know, the price of airfare has skyrocketed the past few years. To make matters worse, we are being nickel and dimed with luggage fees and extra taxes… heck some airlines are even charging for a friggin’ soda pop! The whole situation is truly out of control.

This is why now more than ever, we need to milk our credit cards for all the rewards we can get. But do the American Airlines cards do that? Let’s take a look…

They actually offers a few different consumer cards offered:

American Airlines Credit Card
This is their very basic card. It is not associated with Visa/MC/Discover/Amex, so it can only be used to purchase airfare from American Airlines and their affiliates. You don’t earn extra AAdvantage miles by making purchases on this card. At the time of this review, the APR on this card is a whopping 23.99%.

Verdict: Think of this as a department store credit card. All this can be used for is to purchase flights from American Airlines. Considering the sky high annual fee and the fact it doesn’t give extra miles on purchases makes this card utterly useless.

Citi Platinum Select AAdvantage World MasterCard
Citi Select AAdvantage American Express Card
Both of these are basically the same, the apparent difference being that one processes transactions through MasterCard, the other through American Express. Here's what they have in common...

Annual Fee: $85.00 per year (which is pretty high for a travel rewards card)

Rewards: You only earn one mile per dollar spent.

Fine Print: They advertise there’s “no blackout dates on award travel” but I feel this statement is a bit deceiving. Why? Because although it’s true they don’t have blackout dates, when you read the fine print you will discover that “award seats may not be available on all flights or to all destinations.”

Furthemore, the mileage redemption for MileSAAver Peak and Off-Peak are not the same. In fact, it appears the “peak” tends to cost you 50% to 100% more! Being that the miles required for an AAnytime flight within the continental US is the typical 25,000, it’s fair to say the rewards redemption on these two cards is nothing special.

More Fees: To add insult to injury, I found a number of extra fees buried in the fine print. If you’ve booked a MileSAAver award ticket and you need to change it, you will be charged a $150.00 fee. For flights ticketed 7 to 20 days before departure, you are charged an extra $50 fee. For flights ticketed 6 days or less before departure, you are charged an extra $100 fee.

Verdict: Honestly I can see no rationalization for getting any American Airlines credit card. Why would you pay an $85.00 annual fee only to earn average rewards and then be subject to various fees on top of that?

A Better Option (Advertisement)
Right now our favorite travel rewards card is the Escape card by Discover. The rewards beat everyone, bar none! You get DOUBLE POINTS for every dollar spent. There are no blackout dates, the points never expire (as long as you have the card), and you can redeem the points for any airline, anytime! Best of all the annual fee is only $60! Here are the details on the Discover Escape card along with a special link to get 25,000 bonus miles for signing up!