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I’ve been a big proponent of American Airlines Business Extra program whereby AA loyalists can earn Business Extra points alongside Aadvantage miles. It’s a super easy double dip for small businesses. Today, I received an email explaining some amendments being done to the program that will certainly hurt businesses that have fewer than 3 employees.
New Requirements starting 1/1/23 – no point redemptions for businesses with fewer than 3 unique fliers and $5k qualifying spend
*This also goes into effect if you enroll in the program after 10/4/21.
Clearly AA has run a cost/benefit analysis and realized that businesses that don’t spend much and have fewer than 3 employees are bigger takers than givers. I understand it, but at the same time, this has to hurt for a lot fo consultant based businesses that rack up a ton of miles and spend, but would only have one employee under their business extra account. I don’t see any terms that stipulate the extra two people have to rack up any activity, so perhaps you could add non-flying employees to the account, but this is certainly a hit.
Business Extra has been an outstanding way to upgrade domestic flights, especially on those transcontinental flights offering lie flat seats, for just 650 Business Extra points. I’ve done this many a time but, without adding unique fliers to my account, will sadly be ineligible going forward.
Convert Business Extra into AA miles = 1.2 miles per dollar spend on AA
As a quick refresher you need to spend $5 to earn 1 business extra point. Now you can redeem one business extra point for 6 AA miles
$5k = 1000 Business Extra Miles = 6000 AA miles Business Extra points can now get you higher status
As you can see in the table below…you can offload Business Extra points for AA status
- Gold = 3200
- Platinum = 6600
Overall
This will be the death of business extra for a lot of small businesses.
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