Amex Removes Frontier Airlines From Airline Incidentals
Laziness strikes again! In a surprising move, Amex removes Frontier Airlines from airline incidentals. These are the credits you get on premium cards like the Amex Business Platinum, Hilton Aspire and personal Platinum cards. You select your airline of choice and then your first $200 in incidental purchases, for things like seats, bags and lounge access, are credited off. Although, it works for some other things too though. One of the easier selections was Frontier Airlines because they charge fees for EVERYTHING! So burning $200 in credit was pretty simple if you have a flight with Frontier. That is something I just happen to have upcoming since I went to the airport to book some flights and save a ton of money just last week.
Had I been on the ball I could have selected Frontier Airlines as my choice for airline incidental on one of our two new Business Platinum cards, which have been super annoying by the way. Anyone that already selected Frontier as their airline of choice is grandfathered in until 2023. People selecting their airline for the first time, from new sign ups etc., this is no longer a choice. The cut off date appears to be November 21st.
My plan was to use the credits to select our seats and maybe add a carry on bag for my wife. That would give us a little bit more space than just 4 backpacks for our trip. Putting it on the back burner cost me that chance though.
I am not sure why American Express removed them as an option. Spirit Airlines is still available which offers just as easy use of these credits, so it had to be something more than the fact they were easily used. I know Amex loves their breakage but I doubt that played a huge role here. I can’t imagine Frontier was a super popular choice anyway.
This is another loss in the procrastination column. It is like going to sleep instead of booking that award flight and leaving it till the morning. You know those flights will be gone when you wake up! Although, to be fair to myself, I don’t think anyone saw this coming. I would have expected it to happen at the end of the calendar year if it were to happen at all. Regardless, having less options is never a good thing for us, the consumer.
HT DDG
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theres a simple technology fix to this someone just needed to write the code.
They removed them because of the $599 fly-free pass thing. I almost pulled the trigger on it but apparently, someone woke up at Amex and saw this as I did.
I don’t see why that would matter. It is capped at $200 a year so it isn’t like they could get taken to the cleaners on it or anything.
Anyone buy the unlimited pass with an Amex and get $200/$250 reimbursement? I wonder if that played a role in Amex’ decision.