Joe Raedle | Getty Images News | Getty Images<\/p>\n
American Airlines<\/a> said Wednesday that it will keep the spending requirements to earn<\/a> elite frequent flyer status in 2027 steady for a third consecutive year as the carrier courts higher-spending travelers and tries to catch up to industry profit leaders Delta Air Lines<\/a> and United Airlines<\/a>.<\/p>\n Delta and United each said they would also keep elite status thresholds the same for the 2026 earning year. <\/p>\n Airlines offer elite loyalty program members perks \u2014 ranging from earlier boarding and a free checked bag to free upgrades to roomier cabins and airport lounge memberships \u2014 in exchange for lots of flights on the carrier and its partners, as well as co-branding credit card spending.<\/p>\n Airlines in recent years have switched their loyalty program models to reward travelers’ spending instead of simply how far they fly.<\/p>\n American said it is also adding more perks for milestones in between earned status tiers, like two food and beverage coupons at the 15,000-point level or a subscription to The New York Times games or cooking platforms or the Times’ sports publication, The Athletic. The first level of elite status, Gold, is awarded at 40,000 loyalty points.<\/p>\n The carrier has been investing in new cabins and larger lounges and on Tuesday said it is starting to offer free in-flight Wi-Fi<\/a>, a plan it announced last April. <\/p>\n American didn’t outline adjustments to its Citibank<\/a> credit cards after it said it would drop Barclays <\/a>as one of its credit card partners, though it expects to announce changes later this year.<\/p>\n Read more CNBC airline news<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Raedle | Getty Images News | Getty Images American Airlines said Wednesday that it will keep the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":499441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[166,10314,10315,9167,78,133,64,81,26447,14828,79,2252,135,522,1164,10316,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-499440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-aerospace-and-defense-industry","9":"tag-airlines","10":"tag-american-airlines-group-inc","11":"tag-breaking-news-business","12":"tag-breaking-news-economy","13":"tag-breaking-news-markets","14":"tag-business","15":"tag-business-news","16":"tag-citigroup-inc","17":"tag-delta-air-lines-inc","18":"tag-economy","19":"tag-life","20":"tag-markets","21":"tag-transportation","22":"tag-travel","23":"tag-united-airlines-holdings-inc","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-unitedstates","26":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115855113845036074","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}