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Business Extra ("ExtrAA") Program (master thread)

Old Nov 21, 2012, 10:53 am
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Last edit by: Prospero
American Airlines Business Extra Program (master thread)

Historical Notes
  • October 5th, 2021: New award types introduced: BXL1 for Platinum status and BXP0 to convert Business Extra points to AA miles at a 1:6 rate. New requirement introduced to redeem: Starting January 1, 2023, current members will be required to have three unique travelers and maintain $5,000 in qualifying Business Extra flight activity during the previous 12-month period to redeem points.This policy will go into effect immediately for new members who join the program on October 4, 2021 or later.
  • Feb 2018 - BXP1, BXP2, BXP3 Upgrade Certificates can be redeemed electronically, without the need to redeem or submit paper certificates. [URL="https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/29470237-post1150.html"[/url]
  • Dec 2015 - Unannounced more-restrictive changes to BXP upgrade certificates implemented. [URL="http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/american-airlines-aadvantage/898180-business-extra-program-master-thread-consolidated.html#post25942133"[/url]
  • Nov 2015 - Europe AA Business Extra closed and migrated to AA-BA-IB On Business [URL="http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/american-airlines-aadvantage-combined-airline-program/1715008-aa-ba-ib-europe-business-programme-nov-30-2015-ex-business-extra-europe.html"[/url]
  • Oct 2014 - Business Extra Awards may be redeemed for flights on US Airways
  • Sep 2013 - Business ExtrAA brand changed to simply Business Extra
  • Sep 2012 - Upgrade Awards are no longer restricted to use within 30 days of travel [url=http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/19345217-post394.html[/url]

Key Information
  • Promotion Codes - For a current list of Business ExtrAA promotions, see: Business ExtrAA Bonus Offers (consolidated)

  • Point Expiration - Business Extra points expire on a rolling basis, two years after the year in which they are earned, on December 31 at midnight U.S. Central Time. Their validity can not be extended.

  • Award Redemption - All awards must be redeemed via the Business Extra website. Flight Awards are delivered electronically via email with an Electronic Authorization Number. Upgrade Awards and Admirals Club Day Passes are delivered in paper certificate form via regular mail. Redemption sweeps occur twice per week and expedited delivery is available if you provide your FedEx/UPS account number via email. Gold Status and Admirals Club Membership awards are processed and active in the member's account after approximately one week, with other membership materials delivered in the mail within 4 weeks.

    Note: BE awards must be booked on nonstop flights if they are available between your origin and destination.

  • Award Inventory Codes - Per Meeting Services, Business Extra Awards book into the following inventory (although there are conflicting reports from mvoight and InsipidMonkey on whether or not this information is accurate for PlanAAhead Awards, for which availability may be significantly less than MileSAAver Award and/or T inventory availability):Award Type Books Into
    PlanAAhead - Economy T
    PlanAAhead - Business* U
    PlanAAhead - First Z

    AAnytime - Economy Y
    AAnytime - Business* J
    AAnytime - First F

    Upgrade to Business* C
    Upgrade to First A

    * = First class cabin on 2-class flights
    = First class cabin on 3-class flights

  • Flight Award Reservations - Award Tickets must be booked through AA Meeting Services at 1-800-433-1790 (U.S. and Canada; others contact your local reservations office), and you will need to provide the Reservations Agent with the Electronic Authorization Number from your award certificate. As of Oct 2012, flight awards can be booked without a telephone booking service charge.

  • Flight Award Expiration - As published on the Business Extra website, Award Tickets must be booked within one year of redeeming the certificate, and are then valid for one year from booking:

    Award ticket must be issued by midnight one year from the original award redemption date. Tickets issued against Business Extra flight awards are then valid for one year from the ticket issue date.
  • Upgrade Award Reservations - Upgrade Awards may be applied once a reservation is Ticketed by calling AA Meeting Services or using the Business Extra website. Once requested online you will receive an email with a confirmation number and serial numbers for each upgrade certificate requested.

    Upgrade Awards carry fare restrictions (excludes B, N, O, Q or S fares). Take careful note of your fare when making a reservation. It is possible to "Upfare" a reservation from the lowest available fare to an BXP-upgrade-eligible fare by placing it on Hold at AA.com, calling AA to request the desired higher fare basis code, then completing the purchase online.

    You can specify ITA searches that exclude the ineligible fares as follows:jfk:: aa /f ~bc = b & ~bc = n & ~bc = o & ~bc = q & ~bc = s

    (Or you can place everything after the slash directly in the second advanced control box.)

    These filters can also be concatenated with other commands, such as maximum duration, separated with a semicolon:jfk:: aa /maxdur 800 ; f ~bc = b & ~bc = n & ~bc = o & ~bc = q & ~bc = s

  • Upgrade Award Expiration - Electronic BXP Upgrade Awards are valid for 1 year from redemption. Previously, paper Upgrade Awards were valid thru Jun 30 or Dec 31 of the following year, with the exact date depending on the batch of certificates available at the time of redemption.

  • Returning Unused Awards - Points redeemed for awards but not yet applied to a ticket can be returned for no charge by using the 'returns' option in your account options. Points will be reinstated with an expiration date 2 calendar years from reinstatement (i.e., expiring on December 31 two calendar years from reinstatement). For awards already applied to a ticket, you must call Business ExtrAA customer services at 800-457-7072, or email [email protected]. Customers outside the US should use the email.
  • Business Extra Account Credit - A Business Extra number can be added to an existing reservation (for example, booked by a third-party travel agent) by calling AA Meeting Services.

    A Business Extra number can be added to an existing BA reservation as follows:
    1. Go to www.britishairways.com
    2. Select 'Manage My Booking' tab
    3. Follow the instructions to pull up your reservation
    4. Select the link towards bottom listed under 'Quick Links' 'Add On Business or Business Extra number'
    5. Add your Business Extra number and check the box to give your consent.

    Retroactive credit for completed travel can be requested via the Business Extra website.

  • Contact Business Extra

    Web home page: https://www.businessextra.com

    Booking and Ticketing (Meeting Services desk)
    www.aa.com
    1-800-433-1790 5:00 a.m. - 12:00 midnight (CT) 7 days a week

    Business Extra Customer Service
    1-800-457-7072 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (CT) Monday - Friday
    Fax: 1-817-931-9029
    E-mail: [email protected]

    Link to aa.com BE contact web form
    http://www.aa.com/contactAA/viewEmai...businessExtrAA

    Link to BE web contact form

Note: older posts have been archived to ARCHIVE: Business Extra Program master thread (consolidated)
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Business Extra ("ExtrAA") Program (master thread)

Old Apr 19, 2019, 5:33 am
  #871  
FlyerTalk Evangelist
 
Join Date: Feb 2001
Location: RDU <|> MMX
Programs: AA EXP 2MM, SK EBS
Posts: 12,281
Originally Posted by bht-kevin
Has anyone else had problems getting upgraded using BXP3 when booked as Premium Economy. It seems like its an ordeal every time. I just somehow lost an upgrade because it took Business Extra 45 minutes to figure out why they couldn't take from the C inventory only to have it taken by someone using Miles+Money or SWUs. I have SWUs sitting in my account and would have used them for a HKG->DFW upgrade. It seems like this is a problem EVERYTIME i try to upgrade from PE.

Am I just an isolated case?
I don't think it's related to PE specifically but more to the Meeting Services agents. IME over the past 3 years they have become no different than your basic AA phone agent, i.e. a majority have no idea what they're doing. They're poorly trained, make up stuff as to why an award or upgrade can't be booked, etc. Meanwhile you can HUCA once or twice and the next agent will have no problem booking it. Same ole AA garbage just in a different department.

It completely sucks that you lost C space on HKG-DFW due to the Merting Services incompetence.
JJeffrey is online now  
Old Apr 19, 2019, 8:24 am
  #872  
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: PHX
Programs: AA Ex Platinum & 1MM, DL PLT, Marriott Gold, HH Diamond
Posts: 2,490
Absolutely agree-I suspect calls are going to the same gen'l pool of AAgents (who have no idea what they're doing about almost everything) that are handling all calls, just being prioritized in a different way. The last 2 times I have tried to use a BXP1, it has taken me a minimum of 3 phone calls each time to get it done w/every agent insisting I have to call back for each step along the way.

As I told AA in the post-trip survey I got this week, when it asked why I had given them a 0 rating for likelihood of recommending AA to friends/family, they don't give me any reason TO fly them, but continue to give me lots of reasons not to!
txrus is offline  
Old Apr 19, 2019, 12:24 pm
  #873  
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: SBA
Programs: UA & AA 1 million miler
Posts: 1,134
Originally Posted by bht-kevin
Has anyone else had problems getting upgraded using BXP3 when booked as Premium Economy. It seems like its an ordeal every time. I just somehow lost an upgrade because it took Business Extra 45 minutes to figure out why they couldn't take from the C inventory only to have it taken by someone using Miles+Money or SWUs. I have SWUs sitting in my account and would have used them for a HKG->DFW upgrade. It seems like this is a problem EVERYTIME i try to upgrade from PE.

Am I just an isolated case?
I guess I was lucky last week, then.
I was waitlisted for P->C upgrade LAX-HKG by SWU for months. Two days prior to my departure C became available for a short time period, say 2 hours. I set up EF but I didn’t get a notification, though... I coincidentally found the C availability by myself. Recently EF notification is very slow and I don’t trust it.
Anyway I called Meeting Services immediately and told the agent that I wanted to use BXP3 to upgrade my seat P-> C.
The agent checked my reservation and wanted to confirm I didn’t want to use my SWU first then I was on hold for a few minutes while she was clearing up my reservation to get ready to use BXP3. She came back and asked me to give her BXP3 information. I refreshed my itinerary and the page showed my new business seat. The only difference between SWU and BXP3 upgrade was that my ticket was never reissued.
I saw horrible things about using BXP upgrades in this threads, so I was kinda surprised since it went well without any issues...


MrJBoy is offline  
Old Apr 19, 2019, 12:54 pm
  #874  
 
Join Date: May 2011
Location: DFW
Programs: AA EXP, LT Gold
Posts: 3,138
Stories like this are why I keep storing up my BE points instead of redeeming them for BXP3s. I've been using M+CP when my SWUs are scarce lately. I have about 11K BE points available to redeem, but I think I'll continue to save them for J-F upgrades, or maybe for a different redemption. I'm too nervous to lose an upgrade from Y/W to J.
econometrics is offline  
Old Apr 21, 2019, 7:48 pm
  #875  
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: TX
Programs: AA: EXP MR: Ti
Posts: 495
Maybe I missed this up the thread, so apologies if this is a redundant or asked/answered question... if C space opens on a flight outside of Meeting Services business hours, can a regular agent push a BXP3 through?
asf-07 is offline  
Old Apr 21, 2019, 7:53 pm
  #876  
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Live: PWM/KBXM/BGR; Work: DCA/DFW/Everywhere; Play: LAS/MUC/MLE
Programs: AA EXP, DL PM, Hyatt Glob, Marriott Ambassador/LTP, Nat'l Exec Elite, mlife Noir, LEYE Gold
Posts: 6,619
Originally Posted by asf-07
Maybe I missed this up the thread, so apologies if this is a redundant or asked/answered question... if C space opens on a flight outside of Meeting Services business hours, can a regular agent push a BXP3 through?
Not possible. Regular AAgents won't touch a BE award.
platbrownguy is online now  
Old Apr 21, 2019, 8:30 pm
  #877  
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: TX
Programs: AA: EXP MR: Ti
Posts: 495
Originally Posted by platbrownguy
Not possible. Regular AAgents won't touch a BE award.
ugh. ok, thanks.
asf-07 is offline  
Old Apr 24, 2019, 3:25 am
  #878  
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: HND
Programs: AA EXP, UA 1K
Posts: 1,230
Just got an e-mail that BE awards and upgrades can now be searched and booked online.

https://www.businessextra.com/i18n/c...Award%20Launch
econometrics, Antarius and oopl like this.
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Old Apr 24, 2019, 7:51 am
  #879  
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Join Date: Aug 2012
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Originally Posted by tylerdurden4543
Just got an e-mail that BE awards and upgrades can now be searched and booked online.

https://www.businessextra.com/i18n/c...Award%20Launch
just got it as well.

cool ^
Antarius is offline  
Old Apr 24, 2019, 8:34 am
  #880  
Moderator: Hyatt Gold Passport & Star Alliance
 
Join Date: May 1998
Location: London, UK
Programs: UA-1K 3MM/HY- LT Globalist/BA-GGL/GfL
Posts: 12,005
It's pretty amazing - suddenly lots of really useful functionality.
Switch from PlanAhead to Anytime on the same screen and some really exotic routing - London to Norfolk, VA is valid via LAX!
But, not any better availability I think - for example no saver transatlantic in November when I checked for PlanAhead.
I'll try the upgrade functionality later on.
Markie is offline  
Old Apr 24, 2019, 10:02 am
  #881  
 
Join Date: May 2011
Location: DFW
Programs: AA EXP, LT Gold
Posts: 3,138
Welcome to 2015, American! Lol

Now if we could request upgrades online with SWU or BXP3... maybe by 2025 we will be able to.
econometrics is offline  
Old Apr 24, 2019, 1:26 pm
  #882  
 
Join Date: Apr 2012
Programs: AA EXP, UA Gold, SPG Plat
Posts: 383
Just applied two BXP1 to a roundtrip transcon Y -> J upgrade both ways. No C inventory, so I expected to be on the waitlist. Might be my lucky day. The agent confirmed 3A on both flights, but ran into trouble. I knew 3A was F on the transcon bird but stayed quiet. Few minutes later, she "figured" it out and issued the upgrade. I check my reservation and my seats are indeed First-3A on both legs.

Is that a glitch or my lucky day?
Markie likes this.
caimaster is offline  
Old Apr 24, 2019, 1:32 pm
  #883  
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Live: PWM/KBXM/BGR; Work: DCA/DFW/Everywhere; Play: LAS/MUC/MLE
Programs: AA EXP, DL PM, Hyatt Glob, Marriott Ambassador/LTP, Nat'l Exec Elite, mlife Noir, LEYE Gold
Posts: 6,619
Originally Posted by caimaster
Is that a glitch or my lucky day?
sounds like both... hope it sticks!

I'd guess odds are in your favor... with BXP1s, they never seem to have to be reissued in the same way as SWUs... no separate email, etc. So if you have a seat & can choose a meal, you might just be set...

Unfortunately if they catch it and undo the upgrade you will certainly go back to Y and might then be stuck if J is full
platbrownguy is online now  
Old Apr 30, 2019, 3:55 pm
  #884  
 
Join Date: Jul 2011
Posts: 2,297
Originally Posted by Markie
It's pretty amazing - suddenly lots of really useful functionality.
Switch from PlanAhead to Anytime on the same screen and some really exotic routing - London to Norfolk, VA is valid via LAX!
But, not any better availability I think - for example no saver transatlantic in November when I checked for PlanAhead.
I'll try the upgrade functionality later on.
BE inventory on the new tool is a small subset of flights that will actually work for a BE redemption.
As part of a round trip, I used the regular mileage redemption search tool looking for a business saver itinerary. The one I wanted had a short segment that had no business availability, was in coach, the rest was all in business. The itinerary was one of 20 or so choices on the regular award booking engine at aa.com, while the new businessextra.com booking engine did NOT offer that itinerary. It showed only about 3 choices (vs 20 regular mileage redemption itineraries for business saver).

So I put it on hold and called to see if business extra/meetings services would allow me to book it with a business saver BX1B for a free round trip business class domestic flight. The agent I spoke with said you couldn't mix itineraries and it would require TWO certificates. I pointed out it was a voluntary downgrade for 1 segment, so she "checked with reference" and came back and said oops you're right, and she booked it for me. So while the new site offers to book flights using BE points, there are a lot of other itineraries that you could be overlooking. I have yet to see any double connecting flights when itineraries are available for single connecting flights. (But they will be shows on the regular mileage booking site).

One thing I DO like about the new BE award flight search tool s the ability to filter in or out specific connecting cities. IE avoid Charlotte, or whatever.
LovePrunes is online now  
Old May 6, 2019, 10:50 am
  #885  
 
Join Date: May 2017
Location: San Francisco
Programs: AA EXP
Posts: 364
BusinessExtra points now posting daily: https://www.businessextra.com/i18n/c.../postDaily.jsp
potus18 is offline  

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