American Airlines Says AAdvantage Signups Are Up 30%—But Free Wi-Fi Alone Won’t Make Those Customers Loyal

American Airlines Chief Commercial Officer Nat Pieper says AAdvantage member acquisitions are up 30% year-over-year. At oneworld’s Loyalty Summit on Tuesday, September 8, he described those new members as “leads” for the credit card. Cobrand card revenue is the major driver of profit at U.S. airlines. Citibank is currently sending about $6 billion a year to American, and margins on loyalty revenue are reportedly as high as 50%. American requires an AAdvantage login for its free onboard Wi-Fi. That’s become fairly standard. Wi-Fi is free But you need to join the loyalty program to have access And attention gets monetized such as through a sponsorship deal (watch advertising before accessing the internet) or through targeted ads throughout the logged-in experience. I spoke on the conference’s opening panel about cobrand credit cards alongside the head of currency for IAG Loyalty, which runs Avios, and the Chief Business Officer of Cardless. I’m a skeptic on free Wi-Fi as a card acquisition tool. Passengers need to sign up to gain internet access. They aren’t joining the loyalty program. They’re just registering for free wi-fi. There’s some value but it’s lower than many programs say to expect. There was plenty of enthusiasm for cobrand, and not just from American and British Airways. Smaller carriers were chatting up Cardless about potential U.S. cards. (Philippine Airlines was there, too. They already have partnerships with American, Alaska and Qatar, but there’s still a lot of work to do to integrate with the rest of oneworld. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see them become a points transfer partner.) The optimistic case for Wi-Fi goes something like this: if one in eight new loyalty members becomes a credit card customer, signing up a lot more members should produce a lot more cards. You can’t just apply that conversion assumption to people who created an account to get online. People on the plane travel. An airline may not have useful contact information for someone who booked through an online travel agency. Free Wi-Fi gives them a way to establish that direct relationship and permission to market to the customer. But they still have to do something with it beyond sending credit card offers. Henry Harteveldt said that, over the course of his analyst career, the share of passengers describing themselves as loyal to an airline has fallen from 44% to 13%. Pieper sees opportunity in that. He also argued that airlines remain central to cobrand because “every credit card pitches the destination”—there’s a reason everyone uses Bora Bora in the marketing. Of course, a bank’s own rewards card may do a better job of getting you to Bora Bora than the airline’s card. The airline still has to earn the business. One useful contrast came during a panel moderated by Aly Sider of the Wall Street Journal, with American AAdvantage’s Scott Long, Capital One Travel’s Sarah Moore, and Taj Hotels’ Parveen Chander Kumar. Kumar says housekeepers are expected to notice that a guest is running out of toothpaste and the hotel goes out to buy the same brand if they don’t have it in stock, replacing it while the guest is out. Kumar also noted that premium customers aren’t necessarily the most loyal customers. They’re spending more. Loyal guests will follow a chain even when its hotel isn’t the most luxurious option in a market. He pointed to St. James’ Court, a Taj Hotel in London: guests know the hotel and are known by the hotel, and that relationship can decide where they stay. It reminded me of my conversation with Marriott’s then-CEO Arne Sorenson after the Starwood acquisition. He’d described loyalty as giving the guest the best deal on every stay. I thought he had it backwards. Loyalty means guests choose you even when you aren’t the best deal on a particular stay, because of how you treat them across all their stays. American has a much easier way to start the loyalty relationship, so it’s an own-goal that they walked away from it. They eliminated all mileage-earning on basic economy tickets purchased from December 17, 2025. There’s little question that the first flight credited to an account should earn miles, regardless of fare. Basic economy already earned very few miles: the fares were low and the earning rate was lower than on regular tickets. American’s miles generally expire after 24 months without qualifying activity. If a small starter balance lapses unused, it cost them nothing. It’s only when it jump starts an earning relationship, which is profitable for the airline and increases the likelihood of cobrand conversion, that there’s any cost to those miles at all. If those first miles get the passenger to credit another flight, use the shopping portal, or eventually apply for a card, American has given them a reason to engage. They could welcome a new member with a small mileage balance from the trip they’re taking, instead of telling them the flight they just paid for earns nothing. A huge member file from free wi-fi that doesn’t convert isn’t valuable. It’s the same as hotel programs that make people ‘join’ to access a 2% savings through member rates and then claim it’s some sort of success of ‘loyalty’ because the data file gets bigger. Topics on this page