If you are a member of American Airlines’ program for businesses called “Business Extra” you need to know about a major change being made.
Per an email sent out today:
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. You can track your travel spend progress on your company profile at businessextra.com.
This policy will go into effect immediately for new members who join the program on October 4, 2021 or later.
Many have historically earned Business Extra points alongside AAdvantage miles even if they were a one person company.
Keep in mind that Business Extra points expire at the end of two years after the calendar year earned. So, while this new rule doesn’t auto-expire your points when you don’t qualify, if you miss a year of qualifying you’d have only one more to “qualify to redeem” your points.
I can see their logic, in terms of wanting to make sure that “real” businesses are using the program, but I don’t see the logic in that American Airlines has been spending the last almost two years looking for ways to be customer unfriendly and make it harder and harder to willingly choose to fly AA.
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