What are American Airlines AAdvantage miles worth?

At Frequent Miler, we keep a database of point valuations called “Reasonable Redemption Values.” These are estimates of the “worth” of airline miles, hotel points, transferable points, and more. The idea is that we try to identify the point at which it is “reasonable” to get that much value or more from your points.

This information is critical for making informed decisions. In fact, it’s a key component of the First Year Value information shown on our Best Credit Card Offers page, and it’s similarly used to show which cards offer the best value for everyday spend and which offer the best category bonuses.

When we first started looking at the value of airline miles, we used a laborious manual process to create estimates, but we now have a much better way of pinning down the value of American AAdvantage miles.

Points Path, which is a Google Flights extension, keeps records of both the point prices and cash prices of all searches done via its platform. Points Path founder and former Frequent Miler writer, Julian Kheel, has made this data available to us for the purpose of identifying rewards program point values.

Thanks to Julian and Points Path, we now have access to the results of over 5 million domestic and international American Airlines search results that show both the cash and award prices for the same flight (including partner flights). Using this data, we can provide a far better estimate of the “Reasonable Redemption Value” of AAdvantage Miles than we were ever able to obtain by using manual calculations.

Based on an analysis of Points Path’s data, we’ve concluded that the new Reasonable Redemption Value (RRV) for AAdvantage miles = 1.4 Cents Per Mile.

Points Path Data

Listed below is a summary of the raw data from Points Path. There are two values that are important to us. The median is the point that half of the observed results offered better point value and half offered worse value. We also have the average value of all the searches, in total and by booking class.

Calculations

For our airline RRV values, we’re going to use the midpoints between the average value and the median. The reason is that the difference between the two is an indicator of how often more valuable sweet spots can be found in a given category.

If the median is 1 cent per point, that means that half of all searches produced a value of less than 1 cent per point, and the other half above 1 cent per point. However, if the same data showed an average of 2 cents per point it would mean that some of the 50% of searches that were above 1 cent per point were so far above that they doubled the result to 2 cents per point. Likely, that would indicate a higher prevalence of available sweet spot awards with outsized redemption value…something we like to see.

That’s indeed what happened with AA, as there’s a whopping 33% increase from the median to the mean (or average). That indicates that, even though only half of the searches Points Path tracked showed redemptions above 1.19 cents per mile, enough of those searches produced such outsized value that it raised the average redemption number significantly, to 1.56 cents per mile. To us, this means that there’s still ample opportunity for excellent value to be had when using AA miles.

• Points Path Median Observed Value for American AAdvantage redemptions: 1.19 cents per mile
  (based on the past 365 days of data as of February 20, 2025)
• Points Path Mean Observed Value for American AAdvantage redemptions: 1.56 Cents Per Mile
  (based on the past 365 days of data as of February 20, 2025
• Range: 1.19 to 1.56.
• For our RRV, we’ll pick the middle point between 1.19 and 1.56 and then round it to one decimal, or 1.4 Cents Per Mile.

Conclusion

The exercise described above resulted in a slightly increased Reasonable Redemption Value (RRV) for AAdvantage miles, going from 1.3 cents per mile to 1.4 cents per mile. That’s the point at which most readers are likely to get that much value or more.

Please keep in mind that this does not mean that you will always get 1.4 cents per mile value from your AA miles. In practice, you’ll sometimes find better redemptions and sometimes you’ll find worse. However, we believe that 1.4 cents is a “reasonable” expectation for what your American miles are “worth” when used towards award flights.

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