American Airlines Replaces Flight Vouchers With Electronic Credits, But There’s A Catch

by Gary Leff

This week American Airlines introduced “trip credits” which are automatically generated and sent by email for the unused value of a ticket. Trip credits have a ticket number and are valid for a year from date of issue. They work just like the old eVouchers did… with a catch.

You don’t wait for a customer service email, and that’s good. But you cannot combine a trip credit and an evoucher towards purchase of the same ticket.

  • You can use an evoucher and cash to buy a ticket.
  • You can use a trip credit and cash to buy a ticket.
  • But you cannot use an evoucher and a trip credit

In other words, this is going to mean that customers have different kinds of credit that aren’t combinable – instead of using all the credit we have first, we’ll have to give American Airlines more money even while they’re already holding onto our money.

Up to 8 trip credits can be combined towards a new ticket, but there’s currently no way to combine a trip credit and an evoucher.

A spokesperson tells me that they’re “working on” a solution that would allow eVouchers and Trip Credits to be combined towards a single ticket but “timing is TBD” and until then it isn’t possible.

The easy workaround, it seems to me, is just to allow transfer of evouchers into trip credits (or ‘purchase’ of a trip credit using an evoucher). And a workaround is probably all that’s needed, because eventually evouchers will disappear and all that will be in circulation are trip credits.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Off topic but this just reminded me to go check my United trip credits. I cancelled a $4K+ business class ticket in late February and thought I would have to re-book by next year. It says I just have to book before Jan 2022 which saves me a lot of headache!

  3. Do you have to travel by a voucher expiration date or reserve a new flight by a voucher expiration date? Is American Airlines issuing a longer voucher expiration date than initially issued at the end of December 2021 for flights cancelled in 2020?

  4. What if the eVoucher is more than the ticket I would purchase. Will I have a remaining balance to apply to another trip?

  5. I’m not going to volunteer next time trip credit is Very difficult to book a flight on payment screen can not see “ add flight credit That is bullshit

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