Two years ago American Airlines reduced the value of their small business program by about two-thirds, launching ‘AAdvantage Business” as the replacement for Business ExtrAA.
And American is celebrating this anniversary with a double miles offer. They sent out an email to program members that they can register to earn double credit on flights booked today onward (doesn’t apply to existing bookings) for travel through November 20.
In other words, they want to goose business travel leading up to the holidays. And they want to make sure they don’t reward any business they would’ve gotten anyway (because it’s already been booked).
However American never quite got the tech right for AAdvantage Business. And initially they didn’t even allow agents to help when things didn’t work. So it doesn’t surprise me what registering for this offer is actually like.
- You can’t just click the link from the email to register.
- You have to go log into your AAdvantage Business account. Then you need to go to the settings tab to enter a promo code.
- Settings has 3 sections: “General” “Email domains” “Integrations” where do you think promotions is?
- Find “Promotional codes” at the bottom of general. The email contained a 5 alphanuermic character code. Enter that.
- It generates an error!
“Each promo code must have 6 alphanumeric characters. Items not valid: PSN2Y”
And here I was just happy with myself for not accidentally hitting the red button “Delete business account.”
Well, large corporations (and the super rich) rarely care about the ‘little guy,’ so I guess it’s not much of a surprise that American Airlines doesn’t care about small businesses much either. Boohoo.
This is why American Airlines will never earn a revenue premium or be considered a premium airline. They can never make anything easy for the customer. This is a small business promotion which often means a business owner who is time strapped. So instead of clicking a button to register like most normal businesses offer, no, they need to have about 15 steps and then it doesn’t even work because the code they have given is too short. This sums up American Airlines attitude towards their customer, they just don’t care.
They waste customers time day in and day out with unrealistic flight departures, make everything so complicated. Time is money and small business owners and people in management value their time. Until American Airlines figures this out, they will likely never earn a revenue premium. This is why I switched my business from American to Alaska, Delta, and United and have given up my over a decade of executive platinum status with them. Almost every other airline values my time by providing realistic flight delays so I can complete work in the lounge rather then standing at a gate for 3 hours waiting in 15 minute increments for departure time to change with no inbound aircraft in sight. Waiting 30-50 minutes for bags with American when almost every other airlines delivers my bags in under 20 minutes and often 10. Plus, American Airlines’ employees just don’t care or if they care aren’t given the tools to do their jobs. They truly need to hire a team focused on lean 6 sigma to redo all of their policies and procedures.
@JC1 — Tell us how you really feel.
Listen, all these airlines have their issues, but American is not all that different from their competitors, and they all do just fine. Sure, devaluations or changes in a program are upsetting (worthless PlusPoints and SkyPesos would like a word, as would Mosaic passengers who have no lounges).
The correct code is PSN2YA. A quick search found it online.
The correct code is PSN2YA. A quick search found it online on an AA web page. Of course, my search is many hours later that the original post.
@jns — Sounds like ‘pissin to ya’ (wait, were you doing a bit?)
At least it’s totally on brand…
@1990: American has objectively worse IT than United, and it’s not even close. That difference permeates their websites and apps. Delta seems to fall somewhere in between.
@Christopher J Raehl — Uh… I’ve never been burned as bad by IT than as with the Crowdstrike incident in July 2024. American was fine. United was bad. Delta was worst. (@Sorry, Tim Dunn.) But that’s a one-off. And, in the end, Delta did reimburse me for alternate transportation (rental car, took a while.)
So, what specifically is the ‘tech’ concern with AA? Like, consumer side? Or, operations (mechanical, etc.)
Yeah, I mean, as a customer, sometimes while booking I’ve received an error message, but that happens with the others, too.
Like, recently, had to call-in when one of my eCredits with Delta didn’t process (learned that if you cancel a ‘pay with miles’ ticket, those eCredits need an agent to process); worked out in the end, but again, that’s an IT issue with the competitor, not AA.
At worst with AA, I’ll be attempting to book, something goes wrong, so I have to start over, but the price increased because it thought I was booking, so I have to wait 20 minutes for the price to reset again. Silly stuff, but not catastrophic.
@1990 – “American is not all that different than their competitors.”
Wow. Just wow. How delusional are you? Its chronic underperformance shows up most clearly in reliability, where hard numbers separate it from peers. In 2024, FlightStats ranked American’s on-time percentage at only 50 percent, with average delays of nearly 44 minutes. In 2022, its record was even worse at 48 percent, with delays exceeding 70 minutes. By comparison, Delta and United often maintain on-time rates in the mid-to-high 70s. This persistent weakness ripples through the passenger experience, stranding travelers in hubs, causing missed connections, and piling up costs in meals, hotels, and alternative transport. Reliability at this scale is not a minor blemish; it is a defining failure that undermines any claim of parity with rivals.
The problems deepen when examining customer service and handling of vulnerable passengers. The Better Business Bureau has logged more than 7,000 complaints against American in the past three years, and consumer review sites are filled with accounts of rude staff, lost luggage, and hours spent on hold without resolution. This is reinforced by its middling three-star Skytrax rating and numerous reports of subpar service in premium cabins and lounges that fail to meet international standards. More damning still, in 2025 the U.S. Department of Transportation fined American Airlines $50 million after documenting over 10,000 incidents of mishandled wheelchairs and mobility devices between 2019 and 2023, the largest such fine in history. These systemic failures in treating passengers with disabilities reveal a pattern of negligence that goes beyond ordinary customer service complaints and marks a moral failure as well as a practical one.
Safety and operational breakdowns further reinforce how different American is from its peers, and not in a good way. In 2025, the airline faced lawsuits after an engine fire in Denver and was ordered to pay $11 million following a passenger stroke that was mishandled by crew. Earlier the same year, a technology outage grounded operations nationwide, delaying 40 percent of flights and canceling 7 percent, purely due to internal systems failure. This combination of frequent delays, poor service culture, egregious mishandling of disabled passengers, and high-profile safety and technology lapses underscores that American Airlines is not simply another legacy carrier with shared challenges. It is a carrier with a well-documented record of falling short where competitors at least manage a baseline of reliability and accountability. The evidence makes it clear that American is different, but in ways that should give passengers and regulators little confidence in its ability to deliver the standards it promises.
To claim American Airlines is “not all that different than their competitors” is to ignore mountains of evidence and indulge in a level of delusion that borders on willful blindness. WHAT TF IS WRONG WITH YOU?
I hate to praise Delta in any way…..but by comparison their Skymiles for Business program is straight-forward and easy to use. American (and United) have made the process too cumbersome and time consuming.