I received an update yesterday morning from PageOnce, a service I use to track both my financial and travel loyalty programs, that my American Airlines AAdvantage account balance had been wiped to zero. I figured it was a bug with the service, and went to log in to my AAdvantage account to see the following activity:

A smidge of panic set in until I noticed my total mileage was showing up accurately in the top right corner of the screen. Still concerned about the missing detail, I called AAdvantage and after a short wait got a friendly agent who advised there was a systems glitch they were working on and that many, if not all, members were affected. Apparently nothing happened to the mileage itself, rather the data link from AAdvantage to what we see on AA.com had been damaged. She had no ETA for a fix, but assured me my miles were indeed there and the majority of calls to the center yesterday morning were related to the error.

I was too busy the rest of the day yesterday to return to check, but all appears resolved this morning. This is sort of a non-event to report, but got me to thinking about how much we rely on technology today and the need (or desire, in my case) to have paper records of frequent flyer program activity.

Today, then, I will add a tab to my existing mileage tracking spreadsheet to begin tallying my AAdvantage program detail. As addicted as I am to technology and the services out there that track all things money, points & miles, I find a bit of comfort in keeping my own records as well.