MASTERNC

AA just released more details on bookings that will no longer receive miles if done through a third party.

Sounds like there will be a list of preferred third parties that will still receive points. Businesses that belong to AAdvantage Business or have a contract with American will be able to book employee travel that earns miles.

This all takes effect with tickets booked on or after May 1.

Booking directly with American Airlines and its airline partners makes travel even better for AAdvantage® members - American Airlines Newsroom

AlwaysAisle

I received an e-mail from AA about this. It will be interesting to see how it works for those who have to use Concur for business travels.

ATOBTTR

Will also be interesting to see how this affects USG travelers who have to book GSA City-Pair fares through the respective department's travel system (for me as a DoD member, DTS or "Defense Travel System"). Would really, really suck if we stop earning miles on flights we have to book through DTS.

ty97

LOL ok.

JJeffrey

Leave it up to AA to have a policy change of this magnitude and only release sparse details and sloppy wording.

Looking through the announcement they just say "the only flights that earn....", is that just AA metal flights we're talking about here or all partner flights now too?

Das_Nic

Okay, so I just got off the chat with customer service and they guaranteed to me that the flights that my company books through Egencia would still count for miles for me. Even though said company isn't part of their business program.

I replied with the exact language and they repeated that I'd get miles even after May 1st.

Do they know what they are talking about? WHO CAN SAY! Stay tuned.

AsiaTravel2019

I am not mad at this. I believe most travel through Concur is contracted corporate.

For personal travel, I never book through third party websites. What a nightmare if something goes wrong. I always pay more and book directly through the airline website and have never had a problem.

JJeffrey

The announcement just came out an hour ago, a chat agent isn't going to have a clue about this kind of thing right now.

BrianV

Correction: Starts May 1, 2024

I just got the email about new earning requirements, basically booking directly or through "preferred travel agents". Email links to: https://www.aa.com/i18n/aadvantage-p...NNOUNCEMENT_US

I book majority of my corporate travel through Navan (formerly Trip Actions). I believe they post directly as American Airlines on the credit card (goes to centrally billed CC). Not sure if this is considered a travel agent, but this would have huge ramifications on me if suddenly I don't earn points/LP on these.

bobbybrown

Also covered at
https://thepointsguy.com/news/americ...nges-bag-fees/

As iterated in the blog, hope the major booking channels (such as chase, amex or capital one portal) are included. However, basic economy will earn miles and LP only if booked directly at aa, thus exclude all those channels anyway.. and most of my recent trips were on BE.

bisonrav

I would expect the NDC capable partners will be in the preferred group.

lowfareair

It doesn't surprise me that they are doing this, but it surprises me that they aren't at least going the jetBlue route at first and doing something like 50% miles for flights through non-preferred agencies. There is going to be a lot of negative customer satisfaction for the next year with people who purchased through 3rd party agencies (say, a vacation package through CheapCaribbean) and had no idea their flight wouldn't earn miles.

They don't say, but I'm assuming that AA marketed flights won't earn miles with any FF program, but codeshares (e.g. BA 7832 LHR-CLT operated by AA) still will.

If I was a "non-preferred" agency, I would start flagging AA marketed flights on their site as "doesn't earn miles" in a way that is vague enough to make people think that it applies universally, guiding people to airlines where people can.

Smiley90

I hope Amex Travel which is run by Expedia still counts. The IAP discount is very nice to have. It'd REALLY be bad if suddenly IAP Travel couldn't be credited to AA anymore. What a customer-unfriendly move.

ZenFlyer

I've only been following AAdvantage devlopments closely for the past two years -- by complete coincidence, beginning around the time that the new LP earning program was rolled out. It has been amazing to see the extent to which the marketing department appears to have the lead on determining new policies, without vetting from folks on the operations side, or people who understand in any detail how frequent flier programs work. Clearly this year the new goals are to drive all passengers to register for AAdvantage and all bookings to be done done directly via AA.com -- which are completely appropriate goals for a corporation, but no one seems to think through the implementation in advance. They instead make an announcement, wait to see what kind of problems are brought to their attention, and then later adjust their policy accordingly.

scubadu

I had this thought too. Very concerning as we are literally about to purchase Qatar tickets via this path (the discount is substantial) and my wife would be crediting to AA. Our travel would conclude before May, so wouldn't impact this trip, but certainly not a great development.

Also, though I don't love using OTAs, we also both have the Venture X card and we tend to use the $300 travel credit for simple AA domestic routes that we know we'll travel and not need to change. So though we rarely use OTAs, I do not like losing flexibility...

Regards