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With Business travel still at a virtual standstill, American Airlines has realized that there are a lot of Business Extra Members sitting on a significant number of points that are set to expire at the end of the year. With Business Extra’s terms and conditions stating that points will expire unless used, American Airlines has intervened and confirmed that it is extending the expiration dates for any Business Extra Points that were set to expire on 31 December.
Business Extra is the American Airlines loyalty program for SMEs that rewards businesses for booking employee travel with the airline while employees still earn AAdvantage Miles and elite status credits in the usual way. It’s a nice win-win situation for businesses and employees alike but for rather obvious reasons, 2020 has been a bust for Business Extra members and up until now, a lot of us were at risk of losing a considerable number of points.
Unfortunately, and unlike the AAdvantage program, there is no way of preventing points earned through Business Extra from expiring (they expire two years after the year in which they were earned) so, with a “use them or lose them” policy still in place up until last week, members who have points expiring at the end of 2020 have been facing the very real possibility that they would be losing these points if they didn’t find some way of using them while the pandemic still rages on and while the travel world remains in chaos.
Fortunately, American Airlines has come riding to the rescue and it has been emailing members with confirmation that their expiring points are safe for another year:
“This year, we’re giving members more time to redeem travel awards by extending Business Extra points expiration in light of reduced business travel related to COVID-19.”
“To provide members with more flexibility, Business Extra points set to expire in 2020 will now expire on December 31, 2021.”
If you’re a Business Extra member with points due to expire on 31 December 2020, a quick look at your account should now show you that the expiration date has been changed to 2021. Any points earned last year (2019) and this year (2020) will still expire at the end of 2021 and 2022 respectively so it’s only the expiration dates for point originally earned in 2018 that have been extended.
Bottom Line
All Business Exrraa members who had points due to expire on 31 December 2020 have now had the expiration date for those points pushed back to 31 December 2021. With Business Extra points being a very useful tool for domestic and international upgrades (amongst other things), it’s nice to see that American Airlines hasn’t forgotten about its SME loyalty program members.
