American Airlines Is Still Closing Mileage Accounts Over Credit Card Bonuses From 7 Years Ago

Some people who created new American Airlines accounts after theirs were shut down seven years ago are having their new accounts closed. However, One member reports that Barclays opened a new AAdvantage account for them in 2025 with a card approval, they successfully took an award flight, and American closed the account about two months after it was created and then reiterated that their ban was permanent. An interesting wrinkle is that another previously banned member says they’ve used all four Admirals Club passes from a Strata Elite card (these get deposited into an AAdvantage account) and they’ve kept their new account for about nine months, without putting any miles into it. AAdvantage members who opened Citibank AAdvantage credit card after Citibank AAdvantage credit card using mailed offers were banned. American claimed in court that because some card applications were limited to one new bonus every 48 months, that all should be considered to carry that restriction, and that an offer sent to a spouse and clickable by anyone wasn’t okay to use even if it didn’t say it was limited. The original issue that bonuses that Citibank approved and awarded, consistent with the language in their offers. If the bank wanted to limit how often someone could earn a bonus, it could put that restriction in the offer and enforce it when processing applications. American’s position was that members should have known about restrictions that weren’t in the offers they used. And the consequence wasn’t just losing the bonuses they’d earned, it was forfeiting their entire mileage balance and being banned from the program permanently. Citi screwed up Customers took advantage of that screwup American banned hte customers What’s interesting is that American used to have two different U.S. bank partners (actually, at one point they had three – before Barclays bought the ‘back book’ of pre-America West merger US Airways accounts from Bank of America). Barclays approved a new American Airlines credit card and opened an AAdvantage account for someone American said could never participate again. Those accounts even worked long enough for cardholders to redeem and take an award trip. So those customers thought their ban had been lifted – that ‘lifetime’ had a similar meaning to Amex, which is often around seven years for card initial bonus purposes. Eventually a review caught the old ban. On the one hand, customers knew they were banned. Sometimes bans get lifted, so it’s worth checking to see if that’s the case. Allowing card approvals, inducing card spending, and then rug pulling the miles again seems worse than a continued ban. And now that non-AAdvantage cards (Strata Elite) come with AAdvantage-linked benefits, the Admirals Club passes get deposited to an AAdvantage account, that creates a new wrinkle. Someone needs an account to receive a card benefit that doesn’t directly earn American miles. Topics on this page