A customer tried to use their American Airlines systemwide upgrades 40 minutes to midnight on the day they expired – except the airline doesn’t specify in their terms and conditions what time zone midnight is. The upgrades, which were available for the customer to confirm, could not be used – because they’d already expired 80 minutes earlier.

To be sure, this AAdvantage member shouldn’t have waited so long. But published expiration date is published expiration date, and these are not easy to use. They are confirmed upgrade instruments and the airline rarely makes upgrade space available to confirm. So at the last minute the member decided to book the flights where he could, rather than losing the upgrade (and rather than buying coach and treating these certificates as lottery tickets hoping he might get something out of them at the gate).

Now the Department of Transportation will decide whether American Airlines is being reasonable.

In docket DOT-OST-0031 www.regulations.gov/docket/DOT-O… , passenger David Granet complains that his AA Systemwide Upgrades (earned for substantial flying on AA) expired at midnight Dallas time on the day of expiration. He lives in California and intended to apply them in the final hours. (1/5)

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— benedelman.org (@benedelman.org) May 5, 2025 at 3:06 PM

Granet points out that AA elsewhere describes the time zone of expiration (e.g. of credits), and that for holds AA automatically applies the time zone of the user's location (or at least claims to do so). (2/5)

— benedelman.org (@benedelman.org) May 5, 2025 at 3:06 PM

At times I’ve disagreed with Ben’s analysis, and choice of cases to champion. But I think this is really interesting a really interesting question. Here’s the regulatory docket for the complaint.

The Complainant, an Executive Platinum member of AAdvantage and two million miler tried to call American Airlines to apply sysemwide upgrades 40 minutes before they were going to expire – or so he thought. He lives in California, they expired April 5th and it was still 11:20 p.m at night. However,

• The terms and conditions didn’t specify the time zone in which the systemwide upgrades expired. The customer assumed it was their local time zone (that’s how it often works, such as expiration of hold times for reservations based on departure city time zone).

• American set these to expire at midnight U.S. Central time (their time zone).

The airline eventually offered 3 months to use 3 of their 6 expired systemwides. The member complained to the Department of Transportation alleging that this is a deceptive practice. They say that they needed all six for their travels, and by the time American made the offer the confirmed upgrade space was no longer available anyway. Booking the planned travel would mean flying in coach (at least for part of the trip).

I’d far prefer to see this not reach DOT. American could just say ‘you know, this was ambiguous and we’re literally arguing over minutes – we’ll give this one to you.’

Instead American Airlines argues that,

• When they’re required by regulation to disclose expiration dates, they aren’t required to specify the time zone (!)
  
• The member had a year to use their systemwide upgrades and shouldn’t have waited until the last minute.

American’s response is rather bold here. They afford members a year to use their upgrades so the expiration date doesn’t matter. If they had expired the certificates a week before the expiration date, they could have made the same argument – the consumer could have easily avoided the harm by using their upgrades in the time actually made available to them. And if they can select any time zone they want without disclosing it they could expire all certificates at UTC+14:00 which includes the Republic of Kiribati.

They further suggest that a ‘floating deadline’ personalized to each member would be unreasonable. But they do this all the time with reservations based on departure city. And this wouldn’t be required anyway!

When Bilt Rewards does their monthly Rent Day promotions valid one day only, the day starts on the U.S. East Coast (Eastern time) and ends on the West Coast (Pacific time). Hawaii is out of luck, but each day is treated as 27 hours to cover everyone. They write this in the terms, and specifying what time zone applies in the rules is all the member is asking for.

Related to all of this, American’s phone systems have been overwhelmed around the time of expiration of various benefits like systemwide upgrades, where customers couldn’t get through. One year their Business ExtrAA system went down on the last day to redeem expiring points. Constructively expiring benefits before their stated expiration isn’t ok. And the correct thing to do here is offer some modest grace, not argue that ambiguous terms means the customer’s just out of luck.

Ultimately loyalty is about trust and that means doing the right thing even if you don’t think that the Department of Transportation will require you to do so. The agency’s own Inspector General has said they’ve improperly ignored complaints over frequent flyer programs which is problematic because the Supreme Court has said that in most cases that’s your only avenue of redress.

I’m curious to see how DOT will treat systemwide upgrades versus, say, travel credits given this history so will be watching this case – especially because at the tail end of the Biden Administration the Department of Transportation seemed like it was looking to actively regulate frequent flyer programs and we do not yet know how that’s changed with the new administration.