Update 5/29/24: A few months ago, American Airlines announced that they’d be making a number of customer-unfriendly moves; they’d be increasing baggage fees, increasing pet fees and would be removing the ability to earn AAdvantage miles and Loyalty Points when booking through OTAs (Online Travel Agencies).
While the first two of those will still be going ahead, they’ve changed their mind about the latter. As a result, you’ll continue earning miles and Loyalty Points no matter whether you’ve booked your flight directly with AA, via Amex Travel, via Expedia, via Concur or any other method.
Here’s the original post.
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American Airlines has made an announcement today regarding a number of upcoming changes. Their headline is:
Booking directly with American Airlines and its airline partners makes travel even better for AAdvantage members
That can only mean one thing – things are about to get worse and more expensive.
You can find the full announcement here; here’s a summary of the changes.
Increased Baggage Fees
For travel booked from today (February 20, 2024), if you want to check a bag you’ll pay more for the privilege of doing so. Here’s the new set of fees:
For reference, your first checked bag on domestic flights used to cost $30, while a second checked bag was $45. Those have therefore increased by $10 and $5 respectively. Having said that, you can mitigate the increased fee to an extent because paying for your first checked bag online will “only” cost $35 which represents a $5 increase.
For someone wanting/needing to check two bags round trip in the US, Puerto Rico and US Virgin Islands, you’ll now be looking at paying $160-$170 round trip.
Increased Pet-In-Cabin Fee
American used to charge $125 one-way to bring your eligible pet in the cabin with you. For tickets purchased on or after February 20, that fee will be increasing by 20% to $150.
Oversized And/Or Overweight Items
One very slight bright spot in these changes relates to people who are traveling with items that are oversized and/or overweight from April 17, 2024. If your bags are only a few pounds heavier or only a few inches longer than allowed as standard, you’ll only be charged an extra $30 rather than an extra $100-$200 that American Airlines would’ve previously charged.
If you have items that are both overweight and oversized, you’ll be looking at significantly cheaper fees as you’ll only be charged one consolidated fee rather than two fees.
Here’s a breakdown of how these oversized/overweight fees will be calculated going forward:
For any javelinists, pole vaulters and hang gliders among us, American has bad news for you. From April 17, 2024 they’ll no longer transport your equipment as they’re reducing the oversized limit to 115 linear inches.
No AAdvantage Miles Or Loyalty Points Earnings Booked Via OTAs
This is another big change for people who usually book their flights through OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) rather than directly from American Airlines. For tickets issued from May 1, 2024 onwards, you’ll only earn AAdvantage miles and Loyalty Points when booking via the following channels:
- Book directly with American and eligible partner airlines
- Book travel anywhere as an AAdvantage Business member or contracted corporate traveler
- Book through preferred travel agencies
American hasn’t stated yet as to which travel agencies will be regarded as “preferred”, but have advised that they’ll be sharing a list of them in late April.
For Basic Economy flights, you’ll have to book directly with American – it doesn’t look like those fares will be eligible for mileage earning with whichever travel agencies become preferred.
Quick Thoughts
These are some pretty big changes. American is the first airline (that I can think of) to prevent you from earning miles and status in its loyalty program when booking flights through OTAs like Expedia. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Delta and United following suit once this precedent has been set, so it’ll be interesting to see how long it takes for them to issue a press release themselves announcing something similar.
As for the increased baggage fees, this will make most American Airlines credit cards or earning status in the AAdvantage program more valuable. That’s because most of their credit cards – and all levels of elite status from Gold and above – get a free first checked bag within the US and to a number of destinations worldwide (you can find the full list here). For those with Platinum status and higher, you get two checked bags free. As highlighted above, under the new fee rules that’ll save you $160-$170 round trip for two bags, so frequent – or even not-so-frequent – American Airlines flyers without one of their credit cards could become even more incentivized to earn Loyalty Points. Increasing baggage fees is therefore a win-win for American whatever happens.
For those who travel with pets, the news that it’ll now cost $300 round trip rather than $250 won’t be a welcome change.
Overall, this is a disappointing set of developments, especially because where American have gone with this, United and Delta will surely follow (cue Gilmore Girls theme song).
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