If you fly American Airlines a couple of times a year rather than every week, Citi's AAdvantage Platinum Select World Elite Mastercard is built for exactly your situation. The Points Guy's latest review gives it three stars and calls it the pick for casual American flyers — the trick is knowing what it does and doesn't buy you.
The card costs $99 a year, waived for the first 12 months, and comes with a welcome offer of 80,000 AAdvantage bonus miles. The real workhorse perk is a free first checked bag on domestic American flights for you and four companions. With American charging $45 or more for a first bag, checking a bag twice a year nearly covers the fee on its own. Add priority boarding and there's a case for the card even at modest usage levels.
Other perks include no foreign transaction fees, savings on in-flight food and drinks, and up to $180 a year in statement credits toward Turo car rentals — though you'd need six separate rentals a year to max that out, so most people won't. There's also a $125 flight discount if you spend $20,000 on the card in a year, which the review rightly says isn't worth stretching your budget for.
Watch one big catch: the free bag only applies to domestic flights. Fly from the US to Mexico or Canada and you'll still pay bag fees, which puts this card behind some rival airline cards on that front.
Earning is unremarkable: 2 AAdvantage miles per dollar at gas stations, restaurants and on American purchases, and 1 mile per dollar elsewhere. Every dollar spent also earns a Loyalty Point toward status. The reviewer's advice matches standard points wisdom — don't make an airline card your everyday spender if you can help it. Transferable rewards cards generally earn faster and give you more redemption options. That said, AAdvantage miles can go far: one recent redemption of two one-way domestic flights at 8,500 miles each saved nearly $585, working out to about 3.4 cents per mile — more than double TPG's 1.45-cent valuation of the currency.
Where the Platinum Select falls short is the premium end. There's no lounge access, thin travel and purchase protections, and little in the way of recurring statement credits to offset the fee after year one. If you fly American often enough to want lounge visits, Citi's AAdvantage Globe card ($350 annual fee) steps up with four Admirals Club passes a year and a companion certificate for a domestic round trip in main cabin, redeemable for $99 plus taxes from your second cardholder year.
Who is this for? Travellers who book American a few times a year, usually check a bag, and want the fee to pay for itself without much effort. Dedicated American flyers or anyone chasing lounges and strong trip protections should look up-tier or at a flexible rewards card instead — especially when booking expensive flights, since this one won't bail you out if things go wrong.
