If you have a Business Platinum Card™ from American Express, you’ll notice a new phrase on the 35% Airline Bonus details page.
*Effective September 18, 2025, eligible flights will no longer include First and Business Class tickets booked on an airline that is not your selected qualifying airline.
I don’t think this is a “sky is falling” moment as some people seem to have reacted, but it sure is a negative change – affecting some tremendously and others not at all. And I guess if you cash out pretty much all your Amex points this way, then the sky kind of is falling…
The rebate, when calculated on a CPP basis, allows you to get just north of 1.5 cents per Amex Membership Rewards point on these redemptions.
Many people don’t want to deal with transferring points and figuring out foreign airline loyalty programs and like to use this as a simple way to get ~1.5 cents per point. If you also have an American Express® Business Gold Card, for example, you can earn 4X on your top two categories (out of a pre-defined list of categories) up to $150,000 a year.
That means you can yield 6% return on spend very easily which is attractive.
Going forward, you won’t be able to get this simple redemption on just any airline, but instead only on your one chosen airline from a defined list of airlines. If not only means you can’t redeem them on Qatar’s Qsuites, for example, but that once you make your airline selection for the year (this is tied to your $200 incidental airline credit), that will be the only airline you can redeem for this way.
Thoughts?
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