Updated 1:20pm PT on 5/11/20: It looks like American Airlines has removed the ability to redeem American Airlines AAdvantage Miles for magazines.  You can still redeem for digital and print newspaper, but the prices vary.

Good morning everyone, happy Friday!  I don’t know about you, but I am the designated miles & points expert in the family and part of my job is tracking everyone’s miles & points and keeping their miles & points from expiring.  Last week, I got an email that my brother’s American Airlines miles were going to expire in 30 days.  He only has 2,109 AA miles, so it would not be a huge loss to have them expire, but if there was a simple, easy, and cheap way to keep his AA miles alive, I wanted to do that.  Since these are not my miles, I didn’t really care how I kept the AA miles alive, but I didn’t want to transfer points from Marriott to American Airlines, so instead, I redeemed 300 AA miles for a magazine subscription.

When I logged into my brother’s American Airlines account, there was a big warning message stating that his 2,109 AA miles were going to expire on September 27, 2018.

I looked at his account activity for the last 2 years and saw that his last AA account activity was from March 24, 2017 (roughly 1.5 years ago).

I went to the American Airlines Redeem Miles page and clicked on Magazines for Miles.

As of last week, Mags for Miles had these magazines available, along with the corresponding number of magazines per subscription and the number of AA miles per subscription.  I was looking for the cheapest magazine subscription and spotted PARENTS Magazine for 300 AA miles.

I added that magazine subscription to my cart and clicked the Checkout button.

I then signed into my brother’s American Airlines account.

I then entered his mailing address and clicked the Place Order button.  You can enter anyone’s address, such as a friend’s address, family member’s address, doctor’s office, etc.

Mags for Miles wanted to upsell me on more magazines, but I wasn’t interested, so I clicked the No Thanks link at the bottom of the page.

Here is the confirmation screen for my subscription purchase.

I also received an email confirmation.

A few days later, I logged back into my brother’s American Airlines account and saw that his account balance went down by 300 AA miles.  Under the Wallet tab, it shows his award miles now expire on February 28, 2020 (roughly 1.5 years from now).

Lastly, on his account activity page, the 300 AA mile redemption shows up.

I know that redeeming AA miles for magazine subscriptions is not the best value for AA miles, but it was a quick and easy way to keep my brother’s AA miles alive.  Here are some other ways to keep your AA miles alive! If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.  Have a great weekend everyone!