I haven't posted here in awhile. I thought it might be interesting and perhaps informative to gather some thoughts from those in the Citi credit card realm. I upgraded my Citi AA Platinum card from to the Executive card in 2017, at the time I was flying American a lot for business trips. Since then my work travel has really dropped and I am not flying American that much. With the benefit change to require flying on American to use the lounge benefit it isn't worth it for me to pay $450 a year for the card.
I have confirmed with Citi they will actually let me product change to any of their cards. My original thought was to just downgrade to the $95 AA Platinum again which would still be worth it if I planned to travel at all on American but I also have the Delta Platinum AMEX and I have been leaning more towards Delta now that they have made Austin a focus city.
I really don't need another card, I could just get the Miles Up with no Annual fee and just use it once a year so my American miles don't expire, or I could get another card and just burn my American miles as I don't plan to be using them much.
My last thought, and I don't know if this is possible, do they ever transfer credit limit to another card? I have a Costco card through Citi, I don't want to lose the available credit so I won't be cancelling the card but looking at what my best choices are.
Lots here I know, I am mostly thinking out loud.
I have confirmed with Citi they will actually let me product change to any of their cards. My original thought was to just downgrade to the $95 AA Platinum again which would still be worth it if I planned to travel at all on American but I also have the Delta Platinum AMEX and I have been leaning more towards Delta now that they have made Austin a focus city.
I really don't need another card, I could just get the Miles Up with no Annual fee and just use it once a year so my American miles don't expire, or I could get another card and just burn my American miles as I don't plan to be using them much.
My last thought, and I don't know if this is possible, do they ever transfer credit limit to another card? I have a Costco card through Citi, I don't want to lose the available credit so I won't be cancelling the card but looking at what my best choices are.
Lots here I know, I am mostly thinking out loud.
The more I think about the logical choice, I think the MilesUP card is the right choice, if I find myself back on American after next year I can always upgrade to the Platinum for the flight benefits.
I am already in the UR ecosystem with a CSP and I do have some MRs with the AMEX Everyday but that card gets very little usage. Probably could do way better at maximizing points/cash back. It isn't like I "need" more available credit on the Costco card but I kind of hate having cards that I keep open and use periodically just to pad my total credit limits, the idea of one day having the same amount of credit on just a a few core cards would be appealing but I don't know how to go about that and not have any negative impact to my credit score (obviously a topic for a different thread).
I think I have made my mind up to stay with the American Airlines card and just downgrade to either MilesUp or Platinium for 2020.
The legacy airlines all have about the same number of destinations, but it is true AA has a lot of DFW flights and so changes are you will be routed through DFW on many routes. For domestic travel Southwest is great out of Austin. I am excited about Delta's expansion, my experiences so far with them have been very good (though I know others have had the worst). This year has been a hodpodge of destinations and flights including roughing it out on Sprit and Frontier (Vegas flights). Being able to use the American Airlines lounge even when flying leisure flights on budget airlines was nice, but the change just makes it where i can't justify the AF. I only had like 7 or 8 legs on American this year but used the lounge on average once a month this year (which I am not sure justifies the $450 to begin with, though I did save a lot of money in checked baggage fees, so maybe not terrible).