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This is turning into a big week for travel rewards credit card news, right?
The latest development deals with one of our absolute favorite benefits: the 35% Membership Rewards points rebate on Pay With Points flight bookings.
Some people won’t be too affected. It’ll be downright unpleasant for others.
Pay With Points Rebate
The Business Platinum Card® from American Express members can earn back 35% of the points they use to offset an eligible flight purchase made through American Express Travel. For example, if you use 100,000 points to offset $1,000 (one point = one penny), you’d get 35,000 of those points back. (Up to 1 million points may be earned back each calendar year. Terms apply and enrollment is required.)
I love this feature and it’s the primary reason I’m an Amex Business Platinum member.
An eligible flight is currently considered one of two options:
- A First or Business Class ticket aboard any carrier — just as long as it’s bookable through Amex Travel.
- Any class on one airline you select from a list of select carriers.
- You can select one eligible airline each calendar year.
As first brought to our attention by One Mile at a Time, a significant change strikes on September 18: the First and Business class tickets on any carrier option is going away. The 35% rebate will apply only to the airline you select; there’s no class restriction.
The upcoming change is reflected in the card’s benefit terms.
Which airlines can you select? You can choose from:
- Alaska Airlines
- American Airlines
- Delta Air Lines
- Hawaiian Airlines
- JetBlue Airways
- Spirit Airlines
- Southwest Airlines
- United Airlines
How Bad is This Devaluation?
This depends on how loyal people are to a particular airline or alliance. You won’t lose sleep if Delta is your selected airline and you use the rebate for only Delta flights and no other carrier.
But I know people who use the feature for Aeromexico, Virgin Atlantic, and Air France-KLM business class flights — so they can earn Delta Medallion Qualification Dollars. That won’t be an option for them as of September 18.
If you shop around and look for the best First and Business Class prices on Amex Travel — regardless of airline — this will hurt.
René deLambert sent me a message earlier today with a link to OMAAT’s post about the devaluation. My first thought was, it’s going down to 25% back — or even lower.
While I’m disappointed in this development, the news could’ve been worse.
Will this affect whether you keep or get the card?
Advertiser Disclosure: Eye of the Flyer, a division of Chatterbox Entertainment, Inc., is part of an affiliate sales network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites, such as CreditCards.com. Some or all of the card offers that appear on the website are from advertisers. Compensation may impact how and where card products appear on the site. This site does not include all card companies or all available card offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. Some of the links on this page are affiliate or referral links. We may receive a commission or referral bonus for purchases or successful applications made during shopping sessions or signups initiated from clicking those links.
Responses are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
