Need American Airlines Miles Fast -- any suggestions?

I have 5 award tickets on hold for my family for a trip with American Airlines to Cancun next year. However, I am short 20,000 miles. I could buy them from AA but that would cost around $530 (almost the cost of just buying the ticket outright). Does anybody have any suggestions on how I can quickly and inexpensively get 20,000 miles?

I do have an AA credit card that earns miles and could charge stuff on it, but that would take me several months and I don't think AA would let me continue a hold on one ticket for that long. Thanks. Tim

Have the wife sign up for the AA card? She should be able to get a nice bonus for signing.

My husband and I both had these, though I didn't like them and cancelled the cards recently.

Sheila

sfwilshire said:

Have the wife sign up for the AA card? She should be able to get a nice bonus for signing.

My husband and I both had these, though I didn't like them and cancelled the cards recently.

Sheila

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I just did this too but it is a slow process. Two weeks to get your card & another two or three weeks for the miles to post. If you need miles quickly you'll need to buy them from AA.

This site http://www.freefrequentflyermiles.com/index.htm will show you many ways of earning 20K miles with credit card offers. Most waive the annual fee the first year. As I said above, though, this process can take 4 to 5 weeks.

Phil

Don't forget to take a look at the Starwood Amex card. You can transfer Starwood points to AA. They usually give a decent sign-up bonus...I think I got 8,000 points or so. Also, you can sign up for the Citibank AA Business card and get AA miles.

Tim, If you want to secure the tickets before the two week holding period expires, why not go ahead and purchase the additional miles? It'll actually cost just about $600 by the time taxes and fees are added, but $600 for five tickets to Cancun is still a pretty good deal and there's no way you'll be able to keep a ticket on hold beyond two weeks. Good luck.

Don't buy the miles. Buy a ticket and get AA miles for the flight. That makes a lot more sense. What is your departure airport and when are you leaving? That price seems high. I went from Newark in March and only paid $368.

Tim, where are you? What did you decide?

Pat H said:

Don't buy the miles. Buy a ticket and get AA miles for the flight. That makes a lot more sense. What is your departure airport and when are you leaving? That price seems high. I went from Newark in March and only paid $368.

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The way I interpreted the OP is that he has 5 FF tickets on hold, but is 20,000 miles short. The miles will cost him just about what I stated above and is a lot cheaper than paying for 5 r/t tickets to Cancun.

Jim, I don't think it's five tickets that would be purchased. It's one. The OP has enough AAdvantage miles for four tickets (presumably at a cost of 25,000 or 30,000 AAdvantage miles each), but is 20,000 miles short of what's needed for the fifth one. Notice that at the end of the post, the OP expresses concern about a lengthy hold on the one ticket for which additional miles are needed.

Thus, I agree with Pat. Unless ticket prices for those dates are sky-high, it might well make more sense to buy that fifth ticket rather than pay for the miles to get an award ticket.