In late 2023, American Airlines made major changes to its small business rewards program. The airline ended the American Business Extra program, and replaced it with the AAdvantage Business program.
This was a significant devaluation in terms of the value proposition, which wasn’t really surprising, given American’s war against business travel. Well, with the airline having recently fired Vasu Raja, the architect behind many of these changes, some positive updates have just been announced to the AAdvantage Business program.
In this post:
Positive AAdvantage Business program updates
American is making some positive changes to the AAdvantage business program. I won’t cover all the existing details of the program, but you can read my guide to it here. Instead, I’ll focus on what’s changing. Specifically:
- AAdvantage Business only provided rewards when booking directly with American, while effective immediately, the program will provide rewards regardless of where you book, whether it’s with American or a travel agent, as long as you include your AAdvantage Business number prior to travel
- AAdvantage Business is finally getting phone support, which wasn’t previously available; the department can be contacted Monday through Friday from 7AM until 7PM CT, at 877-229-8278
Furthermore, other positive changes will be made in the future:
- As of later this summer, it’ll be possible to redeem miles directly from your AAdvantage Business account, rather than first having to transfer the miles to an individual AAdvantage account first
- As of later this summer, it’ll be possible to customize payment options for your travelers by storing company cards in your AAdvantage Business account
- As of later this year, it will be possible to manage shared Trip Credits for use across your business, to easily redeem for any registered traveler
- As of later this year, it will be possible to set your company’s travel policy and customize by team or traveler, so that this is integrated into the aa.com booking experience
- As of later this year, name change waivers will be available for agency bookings for all program members, offering the flexibility to transfer tickets between travelers
These are all great changes, but…
All of these changes to the AAdvantage Business program are positive, and I’m happy to see them. Truthfully, American is just making the program a little bit less sucky than it was before. For example, not having any phone support at all for an airline business program was outrageous.
That being said, this hardly moves the needle much when it comes to restoring any faith in American being serious about business travel:
- American axed its AirPass program in late 2022, which was popular with small businesses
- The AAdvantage Business program is way less lucrative than the American Business Extra program that it replaced
- There are still some absurd policies with the AAdvantage Business program, including that you can’t add your number to a reservation if there’s more than one traveler; I guess American thinks people only do business travel solo
American is in a really bad spot, plain and simple. The airline is dealing with soaring costs, all while yields are going down due to industry overcapacity. The airline spent the past years arrogantly arguing it doesn’t need business travel, and it’s now paying the price.
Just about all the industry profits in the US at this point are with Delta and (to a lesser extent) United, and even those seem to be trending downward. Even with Raja gone, it amazes me that the board still has faith in the current management team, which was seemingly fine with everything that happened up until this point.
Bottom line
American has made some positive updates to its AAdvantage Business program, including letting you earn rewards regardless of where you book, and introducing phone support. More positive changes should also be coming before the end of the year.
This is a small step in the right direction, but hardly makes up for the extent to which American has for the past couple of years tried to tell business travelers to pound sand.
What do you make of these AAdvantage Business program updates?
I tried to book multi-city itinerary for 5 a couple of months ago (you can’t). What a disaster! Ended up booking online on aa.com without the business bonus miles. I can confirm that as of May, you can not add your AAdvantage Business number afterwards. Still pretty much useless to this small business owner.
FYI. AAdvantage Business should also provide an email address. I recently made a reservation without indicating that the travel was for business. I called AAdvantage Business this morning to add my reservation to my AAdvantage Business account but was rebuffed. Therefore, the change you cited in your article that AAdvantage Business can include your AAdvantage Business number prior to travel is not true. Thank you.
877-229-8278 = 877-AA X VASU
Whoever came up with that number should be promoted!
As a travel advisor I know longer actively avoid them. But only promote them if the clients is "hub bound"
tried registering as a small business, after years of business extra and the system just wouldnt work. Emailed the agents.....crickets
AA needs to update and rework its Million Miler program ASAP. I don't think those with Credit Card spend from 2010 should count on this new scheme either. So, AA should make some new date of counting them, and then investigate those who had butt in seat and/or promotional miles from before the "Barclays spend days". There are many high quality passengers sitting on the sidelines who have moved their business due to AA policies.
Doesn’t move the ball at all . Like others , I moved my biz away when AAirpass was eliminated . And let’s not forget the terribly uncompetitive million miler program. Really enjoying UA and DL and their partners.
We moved all of our business travel to Southwest when AA ended business extraa. We are a Dallas-based company. We can only fly other carriers when a direct flight is not available. Just so much more dependable with SWA. Unfortunately, SWA's business program has proved too complicated for employees to effectively use - they still book on southwest.com instead of going to the separate Swabiz.com website.
I find it ironic that you consider WN much more reliable than AA. My Southwest flights have been heavily delay prone this summer. I am on a Southwest flight once a week. With a lot of WN East Coast flights transiting through Florida, which loves summer thunderstorms and WX, delays are expected now.
Yawn. I’ve moved all my business to raved away from AA in part because of the gutting of BusinessExtra and AirPass. Too little. Too late.
As a small business owner we used to exclusively fly American due to the aairpass program. Now they have shuttered it we have been utilizing other airlines with pleasant surprises related to service etc. if American were to reintroduce the aairpass program we might consider returning.
Another initiative of AA's now-departed wunderkind was to convert CK phone agents to bots. This was slated to be in place by 2026. Given what is transpiring, I'll guess that AA might not remove the human touch from its most valuable relationships. For me, well beyond the business program issues, too much has changed at AA and (by choice) this will be my last year as CK. And, given the state of the marketplace, it'll be free agency.