Barclaycard AAdvantage Aviator Red MasterCard offering 15,000 bonus AAdvantage miles

Earn 15,000 AAdvantage bonus miles by spending $500 per month on the AAdvantage Aviator Red MasterCard from February through April

Per an email this afternoon, Barclaycard is offering 15,000 bonus AAdvantage miles by meeting spending requirements from February and April. This appears to be a targeted offer as the terms state "offer is valid for select cardmembers and is not transferable."

The details are pretty simple as laid out in the email. For each month, February, March and April, spend $500 in new purchases and earn 15,000 AAdvantage miles. Combined with the 1,500 AAdvantage miles for the purchases - assuming these are not purchases with American Airlines which earn two miles per dollar - you will realize 16,500 miles with this promotion.

I don't typically use an airline card that pays out a measly mile per dollar for...well...for anything. When paying for airfare, cards like the Citi Prestige or Citi ThankYou Premier offer 3x points per dollar spent. These points can then be transferred to select airline partners (though not current AAdvantage). However, I will absolutely switch some of my spend during these three months. I easily have $500 per month of spending that receive no bonuses on any of my credit cards. I put most of this spend on my Amex Everyday Preferred Card which offers a 50% bonus on earned points when making 30 transactions per month. I will need to be careful to still hit the 30 transaction threshold. This should not be a problem since I meticulously manage my finances in Banktivity (formerly iBank), though if necessary, there are techniques to ensure achieving a sufficient number of transactions.

Since I am approaching my annual fee for both this card as well as the Citi/AAdvantage Platinum Select MasterCard, I was planning to determine whether to cancel one of these cards. I still will do this, but that analysis has effectively become whether to cancel the Citi card. An $89 annual fee is a small price for 15,000 AAdvantage miles. This translates to a cost per mile of 0.5 cents, a bargain compared to the current valuation of 1.7 cents per AAdvantage mile. For now, I need to put the AAdvantage Aviator Red MasterCard back in my wallet before Monday!

Update: Duh! It hit me later that of course this was targeted. As noted, I am coming up on my renewal when my annual fee will be charged. Naturally, Barclaycard wants to keep me as a customer. Since I have not been using the card much, I am sure their analytics suggest I could be a cancellation risk. Voila! Here's 15,000 AAdvantage miles to maintain your card membership. Right there under my nose and I did not even think about it. As my late father would have said, "If it had been a snake, it would have bit me." Well, I suppose the offer worked like a charm! 

Has anyone else received this offer just before their annual fee was due?