American Airlines 'Mystery Miles' Promo Delivers Facebook Gains

American Airlines has rolled out a new promotion, Mystery Miles, to honor the launch of specific social media channels for its frequent flyer program, AAdvantage.

As a result, AAdvantage has racked up 100,000 more “likes” on Facebook than the airline itself can boast: nearly 240,000, compared to 130,000 for American Air.

Through March 31, users who “like” AAdvantage on Facebook and enter their AAdvantage numbers are taken on a “journey” that ends with a randomly generated mileage amount between 100 and 100,000 AAdvantage miles. The miles are deposited into their AAdvantage accounts within three to five business days, the airline says.

According to a spokesman, American has awarded thousands of miles as of February 24, including the 100,000-mile jackpot to 14 members so far. The mileage amount is randomly generated for each member and is unknown until the participants enter the required information.

“Each award level has a probability associated with it, but the award that each individual member receives is random,” he said. There is no cap on the number of miles American will give away. Members can earn miles through the end of the promotion.

“The channels are designed to regularly share with members various ways to increase their mileage balance, and encourage them to share their methods of earning miles,” the spokesman added.

He says the idea for the promotion came from Weber Shandwick in Baltimore and Dallas and American’s AAdvantage team.

“AA had the miles, the program, and the people, and Weber knew a good ‘like’ promotion with a miles giveaway would work, especially from a social media currency perspective where people would want to share it,” he adds.

According to American, the AAdvantage program has more than 66 million members.

During the promotion, American is also encouraging members to follow @AAdvantage on Twitter. It now has more than 6700 followers (versus nearly 160,000 for @AmericanAir).