A Handy Guide to American Airlines Business Extra Program

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American Airlines’ Business Extra Program is its corporate travel program, which is much the same sort of thing as consumer travel programs. In short, repeat fliers are much more profitable for airlines than one-time fliers, both because it is easier to convince them to buy tickets and because it costs less to convince them to buy tickets. As a result, American Airlines and its competitors have persuasive reasons to reward frequent fliers, thus building up a sense of loyalty in said parties that will keep them returning to those particular airlines again and again in the future. Something that is as true for businesses as it is for consumers.

As a result, the basics of the Business Extra program should be obvious to interested individuals. Essentially, businesses can sign up for the Business Extra program. After which, their employees can earn points for them when they fly with American Airlines. Better still, those employees can earn miles for themselves at the same time, thus resulting in double-dipping because they are earning bonuses in two ways on a single flight. Something that can prove rather intriguing for those who love the prospect of maximizing their rewards.

What Do You Need to Know About the American Airlines Business Extra Program?

There are a number of upsides to the Business Extra program. For example, it has low requirements, meaning that there is no real need for an interested party to fear that they won’t be able to meet them. In fact, its one requirement is literally that there be two travelers, which is about as simple as corporate travel programs get. Likewise, the Business Extra program hands out points in a simple and straightforward manner, which is to say, 1 point for each $5 of spending. However, interested individuals might want to keep in mind that this won’t count fees and taxes, which should be excluded from their personal calculations. On top of this, it is neat that the points collected through the Business Extra program expire on the December 31 of two years after the time when they were collected, though this comes with a downside in that there is no way to extend the deadline for collected points.

With that said, the rewards are, of course, the most important consideration for rewards programs. There are a number of options that include but are not limited to free flights, free flight upgrades, and membership in the Admirals Club. For example, the cheapest option is 300 points for a day-pass to the Admirals Club, which has a value of $59. Considering that this can be had for $1,500 of spending before factoring in fees and taxes, the value provided is not bad. Meanwhile, something like a year-long membership to the Admirals Club costs 3,000 points, which means $15,000 spending before factoring in fees and taxes.

Of course, there are some inconvenient parts to the Business Extra program as well. For example, participants can collect points on certain flights from certain other airlines as well, but they will need to remember which is why if they want to collect. First, they can collect from both British Airways and Iberia flights so long as they are ticketed through either one of them. Second, they can collect from Finnair, Japan Airlines, and Qantas so long as they are ticketed on American Airlines’s ticket stock. Suffice to say that this can get somewhat confusing, which is why interested individuals might want to check the rules before ordering so that they won’t mess up by making bad assumptions. Likewise, it should be mentioned that upgrades are for a single segment and no more than that, which is in addition to the fact that upgrades can’t be used for certain fare classes. Given that those fare classes are the “deep discount” ones, this could pose a problem for people who want to maximize their savings.

Summed up, American Airlines’ Business Extra program offers much to interested parties. However, it has its fair share of both pros and cons, meaning that interested parties will want to examine its conditions with care and consideration to make sure that it is right for them before making a final choice on that matter. Otherwise, they could end up losing out by failing to get all of the benefits that they could have gotten for their spending.

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