Members of American Airlines’ AAdvantage mileage program can now reactive some or all of their miles that expired on or after December 31, 2002. There’s currently no limit as to how many expired miles you can reactivate, but it does come at a price. It’ll cost $50 for every 5,000 miles, plus a $30 processing fee per transaction, per account, and it must be done before December 31, 2007.
For example: to reactivate 24,500 miles from one account will cost $280 – that's a $250 mileage reactivation fee and a $30 transaction fee. To get that many miles, you’ll have to fly round-trip to Asia.
To reactive your miles, you can either call AAdvantage customer service at (800) 421-0600, or email your request to AAdvantage customer service by selecting the Contact AA tab at the top of www.aa.com.
Reactivated miles will be credited to your account as a mileage bonus and do not count toward elite status qualification, and it’ll take up to 72 hours for the miles to post to your account. You will have at least 18 months in which to redeem reactivated miles for an award. Reactivated miles will not expire as long as your account has qualifying activity in any 18-month period. Complete rules and restrictions is available here.