FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - When did the "Pay by Giftcard" feature happen?
Old Oct 29, 2005, 11:24 am
  #9  
acf573
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: New York
Programs: AA Plat, CO Gold
Posts: 1,598
Originally Posted by gemac
Many of us were hoping that they would include functionality for using vouchers on AA.com when they put in the gift card feature. While I have not tried this, it appears that they did not. Since it would have been possible to do this for little or no added cost, we can only assume that AA likes having its passengers only get $35 value out of a $50 voucher.
I think there are 2 main issues with this:
1) Small max value of gift cards. I think AA has been cautious about online redemptions of GCs/vouchers due to security reasons. Thus you can see they limited each gift card to a relatively paltry $100 (to limit exposure on each card). So imagine getting your nice int'l VDB in the form of 8 $100 gift cards. I imagine most people would not be amused.
2) Taxes. VDB vouchers are supposed to get special tax treatment (always excise tax, other taxes if voucher amount greater than base fare). That's non-trivial to implement.

Originally Posted by AApokes08
I was suprised to see an airline offer a giftcard as well. I have never heard of an airline doing this, and it came as a big shock to me when I found out about it. I agree, being able to use the giftcard on-line is also suprising.
CO has had e-mail GCs available for some time now redeemable on CO.com. Value can range from $25 to $10,000! NW has had paper GCs available redeemable on NWA.com. Value can range from $50 to $500.
acf573 is offline