I noticed when updating my best credit card initial bonus offers page several days ago that applications for the Barclays AAdvantage Aviator Business Card had disappeared completely. This news then got picked up by Doctor of Credit and Miles Earn and Burn speculated that this could have something to do with a ‘pending Citi-AA announcement’ (e.g. a new credit card deal where American partnered exclusively with Citibank again on new cardmembers).

However the change doesn’t appear to be permanent or foretell anything about shifting partnerships at all. Instead it has to do with American’s new elite status ‘loyalty points’. The Citibank and Barclays premium consumer cards get a year’s grace period on their spend threshold bonuses for elite status under the new Loyalty Points system of qualifying for AAdvantage elite. The Barclays business card, however, does not.

And, it seems, Barclays wasn’t just able to remove this benefit from its applications and instead has taken the applications down – they can’t promise something to cardmembers they aren’t going to deliver. Expect the Barclays AAdvantage business card to return next year.

According to a Barclays spokesperson.

As American Airlines implements recently announced changes to its AAdvantage loyalty program, we are temporarily pausing applications for the AAdvantage World Elite Business Mastercard so new cardmembers can take full advantage of the new program. At this point, we are looking to re-open the program for applications early in 2022.

Hopefully we’ll see a benefit take the place of earning 3000 qualifying dollars after $25,000 spend on this card when it does re-emerge.