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.
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?
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