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American Airlines has dropped its $75 close-in booking fee for awards ticketed less than 21 days from the date of travel. At this point, this seems to be a genuinely positive change, without any obvious downside. While United made a similar change back in November 2019, they simultaneously increased the number of miles required for trips booked within a month of departure—effectively canceling out any positive impact.
In American's case, we haven't seen any increases in the miles required for close-to-departure bookings. We're cautiously optimistic that this is a rare case of giving customers more value without taking something away. That said, AA's lack of fanfare about the change could be a sign that a negative development is on the horizon.
Avoiding AA Close In Fees
Prior to this change, it was possible to book American-operated flights without a close-in fee by using points from a partner program like Etihad, British Airways, or Iberia. It's worth noting that each of these programs prices award travel differently than American AAdvantage, so it's still worth looking at options before you commit to spending American miles.
Still, in cases where American offers better award pricing—like these sweet spots and these Web Special awards—the elimination of the $75 fee is a significant improvement. If you need to stock up on AAdvantage miles, you can currently get a 65,000-mile sign-up bonus through the CitiBusiness® / AAdvantage® Platinum Select® Mastercard®.
- Free checked bags for you and up to 4 companions on domestic itineraries
- Priority boarding to help you win the race for overhead bin space
- A 25% discount on inflight food, beverage, and Wi-Fi purchases
- Earn 2X miles for every $1 spent on cable and satellite providers
- Earn 2X miles for every $1 spent at gas stations
- Earn 2X miles for every $1 spent on select telecommunications merchants
- Earn 2X miles for every $1 spent on car rentals
- Earn 2X miles for every $1 spent on eligible American Airlines purchases
- Earn 1X mile for every $1 spent on all other purchases
Our Take
Unless the other shoe drops, we'll take this news as a well-deserved win for American loyalists. Only time will tell whether American will follow United and Delta by charging more miles for trips close to departure. If they do plan to adjust their pricing, they're certainly taking their time. At a minimum, it's great news that the AAdvantage program hasn't copied United's punitive 2,000–3,500 mile close-to-departure premium.
With American's expanded Web Saver Awards and the ongoing Reduced Mileage Awards for Barclay and Citi co-brand cardholders, there are tons of great booking opportunities—especially if you can be flexible about dates or destinations. Now, you can book those discounted award tickets as last-minute getaways without forking over an extra $75.
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It¨s good that American drops the fees as United made. This give us the option to return to fly with American in low distance domestic flights
Good news. I think it fair for the customer, 21 days seems too long. Sometimes we just make a last minutes plan. This will encourage people to redeem miles when you have empty seats that won’t be sold by not penalizing them by charging more. We both win
Avoiding this last minute fee is one reason I liked having at least Gold status on AA, if possible.
Great to see some airline making a smart decision. Encouraging people to redeem miles when you have empty seats that wont be sold by not penalizing them by charging more is a win win. Gets those miles off the books at AA and fills empty seats and gets people to redeem and earn/buy more. United could learn from this.
Unsurprised since AA doesn’t ever take the lead on program changes. They copy others. In this case, it’s a positive change.
This is good news, as the close-in booking fee was a huge disincentive for me. Would love it if they started offering better short haul reward options, instead of the usual series of bizarre/long connections.
AA took its time to drop these fees. Thankfully its following UA steps.
So that means dynamic pricing isn’t far away. 🙁
Such Great News!
That will make travelling with them more enticing but thanks for forecast of negative “improvements”
Both the views of those who were happy and those who think that many things can be and should be improved in AAdvantage are valid and normal, but the fact is that in this article we have good news that has been maintained so far. Now let’s use and celebrate. Nobody knows about it tomorrow, but let’s stay with today’s status for now.
I’ll take a win (even if a small one and even if for a little bit) whenever I can! It seems lately like a few brands are trying to really improve the customer experience, and from what I’ve read/heard American is one of them. Hopefully they keep making these positive changes. Looking forward to the next big thing they roll out with fingers crossed!
Good news. Would be nice if United did the same without extra miles cost
Nice to finally see positive changes in an award program.
This is a positive move, but probably means dynamic pricing which makes close in fee obsolete.
It never made sense why they charged this fee, so I’m happy to see it go. Hopefully another shoe doesn’t drop ??
Quite cynical(and probably correct….) to expect another shoe to drop.
AAdvantage will probably win the program of 2020 honor.
Take 10 benefits away throw one good one in
Unfortunately that’s the name of the game with airline programs.
Love saving with AA reduced mileage awards, but it is annoying they are only released every two months and have to be booked over the phone. Just spent 30 minutes on the phone to book 2 reduced mileage flights – but at least I didn’t have to pay the $75 fee!
Definitely liking it for sure!
Yay! I’m happy about this because this goes well with my planned trips for this summer using AA miles.
Good news from American. Hopefully it’s not short lived.
Well, finally, a positive for the customer from AA!
It seems positive but I am waiting for the negative to occur. Despite being treated generally well by American Airlines, I don’t see why they would do this unless they planned to do something that would benefit them overall.
However, when I do use my miles at the last minute, it will be very nice not to pay that fee anymore.
Indeed, this is a positive change.
I hope there will be no negative changes in the immediate future.
Don’t hold your breath on that. Devaluations are as normal as the rising sun.
woohoo! Happy about the good news. Crossing fingers that more positive things are on the horizon.
Now that AS and AA are partners, I am wondering what changes are coming. I am hoping that AS doesn’t go the way of AA on miles redemptions and earning status.
Now if they could get rid of their expiration date and do credit card transfers that would be great.
I would consider this as a truly positive development in the miles and rewards world since a loooongggg time. At this time AA is the only one that’s still running a “traditional” award redemption among US airlines (besides probably Alaska).
This combined with the Alaska and AA announcement is really tempting me to jump from *A to OW.
Yes, please keep the traditional awards alive just for a few more years.
So when will they get with the rest of the legacy airlines and stop mileage expiration?
I just took AAdvantage of this last week! A friend of a friend needed to fly from South Carolina to Michigan for a funeral but could not afford $500 for a round-trip ticket. I had an orphan account with 3000 miles & a seat was available @ 5K, so I bought 2K miles for $80 (Yeah, I know it’s overpriced) to get her a one-way ticket for the next day. We found another friend with 7K miles for the return. Seats are available @ 6K.
Otherwise I would have had to use 15K BA Avios each way!
My bet is that AA will wind up doing something that’s basically dynamic pricing, and that when they do, they’ll effectively charge more miles for a close-in booking (the way United has). But I hope I’m being too pessimistic. We’ll see.
The removal of the $75 fee for travel within 21 days makes Aadvantage a program to look at for those types of bookings. I big win for customers.
Only time will tell if the advantage remains. In fact, the lack of fanfare is not a good sign for the future. For now we are using and enjoying. Thank you for sharing your predictions in this article.
I use AA often, and usually book ahead of time for better fares. Still, I do sometimes travel at the last minute, so this is good news. One would think that close in booking would be cheaper because of seats being a non replenishable good. If they don’t sell it they lose it, and within days before flight time, they now if they have spare seats that are going to go unsold.
Initially, I thought the same. However, the flip side is that the last minute customer is captive to needing to fly. And, in no way do the airlines want to incentivize waiting until the last moment to buy a seat. That’d be for a number of reasons, including, I have to believe, because they need to see demand to plan in advance. But, what I know with certainty is that they’ve run the math, and it’s more profitable to charge more late and risk seats going unsold.
Good news at last. Fingers crossed….