The past year and a half has left many would-be fliers with a variety of credits, vouchers and other forms of compensation for canceled and disrupted flights. American Airlines is now making the ones it’s issued easier to use.
American is in the process of converting all of its ‘flight credits,’ e-vouchers, paper certificates and more into a single kind of credit it is calling ‘trip credit,’ a much more flexible pool to draw from. The new plan was described by AA VP for Revenue Management Scott Chandler in an interview with Zach Griff of ThePointsGuy.
Flight credits are very limited: they can only be used to buy another flight and only for the original passenger. They can’t be combined with other credits or split over multiple trips. The new trip credits are transferable, several can be combined for a purchase, and can cover more than one passenger. As well, they can also be used for flights on Oneworld partners.
The conversion of existing vouchers and flight credits is being done in batches, so not all customers will have access immediately. Aside from customer satisfaction, Chandler said, a bonus for American is that the trip credits can be used online, which should relieve the burden on AA’s phone lines.