I can admit it. I’m an AAdvantage junkie. It’s such a long way to Australia, that I’m still hoping to be able to get enough points to fly at least one trip in First Class, before Qantas does away with it altogether. As a kid I remember flying First Class on Ansett on a Logies trip, but I’ve never flown First on a long haul International flight. Hell, I’ve never even flown Business. Well, once on  Korean flight they bumped me up to a business seat, (I had given up my seat to a family) but it was the last row and they gave me economy food and service.

I fly with American Airlines specifically because they codeshare with Qantas. I’ve flown other airlines, sure, but when I’m headed home, there’s nothing like getting on that Jumbo and getting a Bundaberg Ginger Beer straight away, without waiting 14 hrs… Hearing the Aussie accent is a definite bonus too.

I do everything to accumulate points. I have a Citi AAdvantage Card, I eat at restaurants that give AA points for eating there. I use hotels that will give me AA points. I try to book everything through the AA site so I get extra points.

If I fly home, I try to get a class of ticket that actually gets me points. I was furious when I flew home for “Where are they Now?” and I was booked into O class and didn’t earn ANY miles at all! I was trying to do the secretive AA Gold Challenge and I didn’t get any miles. When I flew home in March, I was again in a super cheap economy seat. But, at least I earnt some miles. Somehow, my husband who flew out after me, and then sat next to me on the way home earned twice as many points as I did. I was peeved that we earned different amounts when we both our arses hurt equally after 15 hrs.

So you can imagine my elation when I received an email this morning from AAmerican, telling me about their new browser that will give me 500 points for downloading it and then I can earn miles just for searching. It will tell me if a site I am on will earn me points for shopping there and show me exclusive offers.

Now, I’m wary of toolbars. I have enough crap on my mac already. I wondered if it would even work on my mac, since their dealfinder wasn’t compatible. But, I figured I’d give it a try…

So, I downloaded the toolbar and started playing with it. I had to hide my other toolbars, like my SEO for firefox, otherwise I had way too much space taken up, but here’s what it looks like.

It’s powered by Yahoo! and I normally use Google, so that may take a little getting used to.

However, since my email inbox also had an offer from Victoria’s Secret, I thought I’d check it out. I saw the tool bar changed from a red $ saying not earning to a green $ earning miles and a pull down showed I would get 2 miles for each dollar spent. Awesome!

I know it sounds silly to be so excited over a toolbar, but if this can get me the points I need to fly with a little bit of luxury when I come home for White Balloon Day in September, then so be it. It’s a ridiculously long travel time from San Antonio to Sydney. The quickest I’ve ever done it was in 26 hours. That’s ONE way. So if I can stretch out and get some sleep on that long flight, then I’m all about getting points any way I can!