AAdvantage Creates Disloyalty
 

American AAdvantage used to notify members when miles were about to expire. Not any more. I had the unfortunate experience of having all my miles expire and when I inquired AA said I could pay $200 to have them reinstated or $30 and the purchase of a round trip ticket to reinstate the miles. Forget about loyalty, forget about membership since the inception of the AAdvantage program, forget about the thousands of miles flown. It's all about trading loyalty for revenue. American's short-term strategy is to thin the ranks of AAvantage members including this one. Enlightened airlines, like DELTA, take a long-term approach to loyalty and don't expire miles.

Frequent flyer programs are for.... you guessed it Frequent Fliers. Miles expire with everyone.
Delta is fine legacy carrier but if you think their Sky Peso's program is a better program than American's Advantage you really need to do some research. I'm feeling generous so I'll help...

http://www.businessinsider.com/ameri...program-2014-9

Agree about Delta. In general, I am not a fan of these loyalty programs.

This said, the OP's primary complaint is not that the miles expire but that no reminders are given before they expire.

It is in fact a generally accepted practice that airline send an email a few months before the miles expire ... to give the member the opportunity to use them, or make additional purchases to extend the validity of the existing miles.

If AA did not do this, it is obviously sneaky of them!

Credit Card
 

Best option is to place your loyalty in credit card programs where you can redeem for real tickets -- no blackout date, seats are available -- instead of diminishing value of airline programs.