Hyatt Partnership Changes Free American Airlines Elites From Loyalty — Opening The Door To Flexible Travel

by Gary Leff on November 3, 2024

For five years, American Airlines and Hyatt have had a lucrative partnership that rewards each program’s elite members with extra points traveling with the other brand. That’s a great extra benefit – especially since the AAdvantage points that American status members earn staying with Hyatt also count towards status.

Unfortunately, the program is being restructured and this points-earning is out.

• In its place is the opportunity to redeem points or choice benefits for status with the other program, whether for a year or a single trip.
• As well as to redeem AAdvantage miles for Hyatt free nights, at a rate that represents a poor value of miles.

Seabird Resort Grand Estate Suite

The logic of this from the perspective of Hyatt and American is that awarding points on every elite member’s trip is expensive, and this new model works harder to target customers who are not yet loyal to a brand rather than rewarding everyone that is. Moving from awarding points to redeeming for benefits also shifts the cost of the partnership from the program onto the member.

Genius, right? Except that what they’ve done also creates an incentive for formerly loyal American Airlines customers not to be loyal anymore since they no longer need to earn status with American and can just redeem Hyatt points for each trip’s status when flying American. Those points can even just be transferred in from Chase.

The new program allows Hyatt Explorist and Globalist members to redeem Hyatt points for AAdvantage status for a single trip.

• 5,000 Hyatt points for AAdvantage Gold
• 8,000 points for Platinum
• 12,000 points for Platinum Pro

American Airlines Extra Legroom Coach

Gold gets first checked bag free, priority check-in and boarding. Platinum gets extra legroom seats (which include free alcoholic beverages) at time of booking, a second bag free, and lounge access when traveling internationally. Platinum Pro gets greater flexibility to travel standby, first class lounge access when traveling internationally, and a third checked bag free.

Platinum Pro Members Access The Soho Lounge at New York JFK on international trips

American AAdvantage allows their own elites to gift this status for a day by redeeming the same number of AAdvantage miles. But you need the status level to gift that status level, and AAdvantage doesn’t (yet) participate in a credit card transfer program.

I suspect that it will make sense for some Hyatt and American elite members to focus just on earning Hyatt status, transfer some Chase points to Hyatt and redeem for AAdvantage status for each trip you wind up making on American – and just travel on whichever airline makes sense on a given trip.

If you’d just be an occasional American traveler this may make more sense than striving for AAdvantage status – especially if you’re doing it now with spending on an AAdvantage credit card. Earn more and more valuable points (like Chase points) spending on a different card instead, and redeeming ad hoc whenever you need the status.

More From View from the Wing